Next-to-last tango in Paris (7/14/01)
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Red Corner. [Jon Avnet, 1997. Written by Robert King.]
Richard Gere comes to China to cut a television distribution deal with some governmental bureaucrats and, after making a few incidental cultural observations so inconsequential that I’ve already forgotten them, gets caught in the crossfire when the contest over whose pockets get lined turns violent. Framed for murder, he’s tossed into a stinking cell in a third world country where the rule of law does not apply [mail the check to Oliver Stone], the embassy mysteriously stops returning his calls, and very unsympathetic attorney Bai Ling is assigned by the court to make sure he gets a fair trial before they hang him. Fortunately the star’s personal magnetism proves superior to circumstance, and Bai, despite her best efforts to despise her decadent Western client, falls for him, starts channeling the spirit of Clarence Darrow, and after the obligatory carchase I still can’t believe they grafted into the plot [maybe I was hallucinating], the trial ends with a Perry Mason moment which in this exotic foreign setting seems to entail actual courtroom gunfire [not a bad idea, when you think about it.] Presumably the sequel will bring Bai to Los Angeles to team up with Gere in a buddy-cop pursuit of drugsmuggling white [or yellow] slavers. But expect me somewhere else.
____________Love among the ruins (7/13/01)
