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Ty Burr
Ty Burr is a writer at large for EW and is no relation to Raymond or Aaron
The story opens and closes in a Beijing park where the bamboo, we’re told, is “waiting for the wind to touch it.” That’s meant to be a metaphor for the 1.2 billion people of China who live under Communist rule, but the wind that blows through Red Corner is mostly from Hollywood. Richard Gere, always least interesting when cast as a good guy, is an entertainment lawyer on business in the Chinese capital who goes to bed with a model and wakes up next to a corpse; what follows plays like Midnight Express as scripted by Ally McBeal. This is Hitchcock’s old wrong-man plot in a novel setting, but it’s helped immeasurably by Bai Ling’s quietly rich portrayal of Gere’s court-appointed attorney. Inevitably, Red Corner insists these two fall in love; that and the increasingly cluttered plot bind the film’s feet, ironically, to outdated Western notions.
Posted Oct 15, 1997
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You Might Also Like
- Movie Review Red Corner (1997) | Ty Burr
- Video Commentary Reviews of ''Seven Years in Tibet,'' ''Red Corner'' | Mike D'Angelo
- Box Office Report Box office: 'Eagle Eye' soars to No. 1 (Sep 26, 2008) | Nicole Sperling
- Movie Review Nights in Rodanthe (Sep 26, 2008) | Lisa Schwarzbaum
- Movie News High-Profile projects by rookie directors
- Television News Donnie Wahlberg lands TNT series
