You know, many people have been bashing on "Red Corner" saying it's not the real China at all. Whether it's or not, doesn't matter; it's a movie, the spectator has to know the difference between a movie and reality. If you really wanna know how it's like in China, search for it on Internet or ask some of your teachers... watching a movie isn't necessarily showing the truth. For instance, there's been made a film called "Turistas" that shows Brazilian people killing and robbing, and nobody is naive enough to believe that's the real Brazil. The same for "Hostel"."Red Corner" is an entertaining political/juridical film towards an American guy suffering a conspiracy from the Chinese authorities and finds a Chinese attorney who helps him. If you like Law and Sociology you'll probably enjoy it and appreciate the ending. The cast do their best and if you have a strong sense of justice, it will be very tense for you. It's just a shame that nobody has seen this film, I believe it didn't have enough publicity back when released.

Jack Moore (Richard Gere) is an American TV executive in Beijing trying to put together a deal for supplying material to China. He catches the eye of a Chinese girl and they head off to his hotel room: the next morning he wakes to find himself covered in her blood and taken away by the authorities to face trial for her murder. He discovers that the Chinese justice system works on very different lines to the US system. With the help of a female Chinese advocate he begins to try to make sense of what has happened to him.This film is mostly a cross between a paranoia thriller and a courtroom drama, with some action sequences which don't fit that comfortably, and some interesting overtones about how to find justice in a system which encourages confession to obtain leniency, and a woman's place in a system which is, in some respects, strongly feudal.There is an irritating moment about halfway through where the plot is moved along by an accidental, fortuitous, and completely improbable discovery by Gere (he catches a bit of a TV broadcast filling in a convenient gap in his knowledge).Gere is good as a man whose self-confidence and arrogance is gradually worn away by the reality of a system which simply won't permit them to exist.Bai Ling is better as his Chinese advocate - realistic, dignified, recognising the need to work within the system as it as, and a woman of intelligence in a culture which does not value her qualities in the way they would be valued in the West.The Beijing setting is unusual, atmospheric and convincing. The film is gripping throughout and a thoroughly enjoyable and exciting movie.

This is a poignant film about today's world and how change can come to a country, any country. In this case we are dealing with China. Corrupted people are framing up an American TV man in order to prevent a contract being signed that does not go in the right direction for their interests. The point is that the corrupted and plotting official is the son of a highly respected man, a son who was educated in the West and brought back his corruption, or at least a good knowledge and know how about it, from his foreign sojourn. He is using the opaque situation in changing China to cover up his dealings and has a little group of plotters and accomplices to manage his operations. But the film tries to show how the Chinese today are realizing from their own experience and history, even from their own culture that includes Mao Zedong and a couple other revolutionaries, that they have to change in their own minds and then change their country. This cannot come from outside, especially not from the US that is no model, neither social nor economic nor even political, but it has to come from inside, from deep down in the souls, the minds and the spirits of the Chinese. What is most difficult for us to understand is that the Chinese live on a completely different set of principles and concepts and that they have to invent a new open society from their very concepts and philosophy. Democracy for example cannot be the same thing in China and the USA or France, for the very simple reason that it is not the same in the USA, Great Britain, France of Italy, not to speak of Japan and Finland. There is not one model. There are many models that are therefore no models at all. The film very carefully and cautiously tries to show us how the mind of a person can open little by little when confronted to real life if that person is simply honest with himself or herself, with his or her own principles, with his or her conception of justice. This leads that person to considering the very concept of human being, of individual, of subject, of what is necessary for that individual to feel free and happy. The very point we are confronted to with China is that it is one fourth of humanity or so and no one has any interest in a brutal and uncontrolled change in a direction that is not carried and supported by the heritage of the country, its history, its culture. The United States have a strange but understandable reaction in front of the rest of the world because they are all the descendants of immigrants who left a culture and a history behind them to build out of conscious and willful choices a new history and a new culture, a heritage that became something that had to be built out of nothing or very little. They cannot understand that other countries will not be able to do any change that would break up the fabric and material of the country itself. If you did that you would provoke a ferocious reaction that could just wash you away in one wink of an eye. Actually the Americans today are not better or worse than other countries and peoples. If we from outside told them you have to rationalize your political system on the let's say German model, they would jump to the sky, and yet how can we accept that the political system is not the same in all the states, that citizens have to publicly declare themselves democrat or republican to be able to take part in the primaries, which goes against the very principle of democracy which is the secrecy of our political choices and our ballots. And If Europeans told the United States that they have to ban the death penalty within one or two or three years to be granted the privilege of being recognized as a democracy and keep the status of permanent veto-endowed member of the Security Council of the United Nations that could be withdrawn from them because of their not having banned the death penalty, they would react violently and viciously. Yet to join the European Community you have to ban the death penalty. This film is a marvelous demonstration of this fascinating question, even if it is slightly sentimental.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Don't let the one star ratings that other people have given Red Corner fool you - Manos: The Hands of Fate this is not. Nonetheless, it's a very dull film, with pedestrian direction and pretty unconvincing acting. Richard Gere and Bai Ling have zero chemistry together, and having to watch Bai Ling try to emote is a bit painful. Gere is just his usually smug self, woefully out of place for the substance (what little there is) of a film like this. The plot is shallow and hackneyed as well. The prime fault of this film, though, is just how overwhelmingly devoid of any aesthetic or artistic sensibility it actually is; it's like a movie of the week, from the melodramatic music to the cardboard characters. Chinese communism is a ripe target for thought-provoking films but this one totally misses the mark. Only the dullest among us would find this tripe 'under-rated' as one IMDb commenter put it. No accounting for taste, I suppose.