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Red
Corner
(1997) |
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Anti-Oriental movies seem to be obsessed with colours in the title, but lack the guts to call their racist little Hollywood productions Yellow Poison or Mustard Chinks. After Ridley Scott's Black Rain we now have Red Corner. This one has Richard Gere (whose salt-and pepper hair has now become a uniform white) as Jack Moore, a businessman in Beijing trying to fix up a satellite TV deal. Gere looks best in bed (American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman, Final Analysis, Sommersby) and so, before long, we have him in a hotel-room with the beautiful daughter of a Chinese General. The only problem is, she ends up dead by the morning and Gere ends up in jail. The rest of the film is traditional fare. We have naked Gere facing horrible Chinese interrogation methods; half-dressed Gere facing horrible Chinese prison food (there's no Peking Duck on the prison menu.'); and fully-dressed Gere facing the stone-faced 'Presiding Chairman' (Tsai Chin, who is remembered fondly by some as the daughter of Fu-Manchu in the schlocky 1960s series). Fortunately, the brilliant female lawyer who chooses to defend him has a heart of gold, an anti-Communist past, and a very soft spot for our American Hero... Will Jack Moore escape from Beijing alive? Who actually murdered his one night stand? What is the American Embassy really up to? Are all Chinese horrid, evil people? Why are Americans so smart? Can Jack Moore (or even Richard Gere in real life as a pro-Tibetan activist) begin an anti-Red revolution? Watch Red Corner and all your doubts will be put to rest.
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