Rambling drama about a US salesman arrested for a murder he did not commit, Red Corner has actual footage of Beijing convincingly mixed with the main shooting which gives the impression that the movie was actually made in China - and presumably with the approval of the Chinese authorities. Unfortunately, this is not really true, and the main Chinese lead - Ling Bai, whose name means 'white light' or 'white spirit' - was at Tiananmen in 1989 and emigrated to the US shortly thereafter. I've met students who lived in China at the time who absolutely refuse to discuss the situation back home; that Ling Bai does is testimony to her 'white spirit', and she really does steal the show from Gere here, in a kind of reverse Casablanca 'hill of beans' role. Whether the depiction of conditions in the Chinese judicial system is accurate or not, the movie does succeed in making the viewer understand that there are two views to almost anything, and that in China, as anywhere, power corrupts. Stacking the deck against consular officials is a nice touch, for these people are truly the cowards and turncoats the movie makes them out to be. The plot swerves from the inexplicable to the Orwellian to a love story (which does, it is true, sort of come out of nowhere), but the final scene on the tarmac does much to salvage that. Maybe Gere wanted to make the Chinese look bad, but they certainly don't need his help. Based on an incident that happened not in China but in Italy, Red Corner is viewable without ever coming close to being a great film. Its one claim to greatness is Ling Bai - she's absolutely fabulous.
