MGM's "Red Corner" is a hot potato politically, but cinematically it's strictly leftover genre parts stirred together around a rousing human-rights theme. On the plus side, the thriller has already caught the ire of China's Ministry of Radio, Film & TV, which objects to the film's depiction of the civil-rights hellhole that China has become under Communist thuggery.
With Richard Gere starring as a U.S. lawyer unjustly facing a death sentence in China, the film has obvious marketing potential. Further, MGM marketeers could have a field day if visiting Chinese bigwig Jiang Zemin grouses about the film, potentially winning mainstream voters, err, viewers with his negative endorsement. We can see the Sunday quote ads now.
Except for the People's Republic of Berkeley and some old-time lefties at the universities, expect "Red Corner" to win some friendly, mainstream viewership.
In this timely scenario, Gere stars as Jack Moore, a smooth corporate lawyer for a communications conglomerate who has traveled to China to close the first satellite deal with the Chinese government. A man of the world (or as we say in the biz, the global community), Moore celebrates his salesmanship with a fetching Chinese beauty who lures him to her boudoir and, clink-clink, after a night of amour, Moore is jolted upright by Chinese soldiers: He is covered with blood and the woman is dead on the sofa.
Due process in China is not a protracted affair: It largely means a four-hour trial and a 99% conviction rate. For capital offenses, it means a bullet to the head within a week of sentencing and a bill to the survivors for the bullet. Even Marcia Clark and Tom Darden might prosecute successfully there.
"Red Corner" is gripping drama during these scenes of incarceration, as Moore is ramrodded through the system. Not allowed U.S. counsel, and with no leading barrister in China willing to the take the case, he is assigned the system's version of a lowly public defender (Bai Ling).
While screenwriter Robert King's scenario is a scorching indictment of Communist-court thuggery, it's structured along the lines of an old-time melodramatic potboiler. The smart viewer will soon notice that it's buttressed by the standard, film-noir framework, as "Red Corner" begins to box itself in on too many fronts. Essentially, the film has the feeling of being perfected to death.
From its "Midnight Run" pinion, the film wobbles under the weight of too many cinematic ingredients: the psychologically wounded hero (the death of Moore's wife and daughter is glibly noted), basted over with an emerging romance between, natch, Moore and his comely defender, rushed to climax with an ending that is straight out of the Perry Mason school of case-solving and then ended with a schmaltzy, airport departure that would have been the wonk ending for "Casablanca" had the market-manic, star-power types been in charge of the studios back then.
Although narratively it's all a bit much, one must commend director Jon Avnet for keeping things generally on track and our interest maintained. Except for some expressionistic camera angles at the end, "Red Corner" is played close to the vest aesthetically and is somewhat lackluster visually.
In this everybody's-a-victim age, Gere's character truly is a victim as he endures a Kafkaesque, brutal and terrifying experience with no support or personal recourse. However, the character himself is too polished with knight-in-shining-armor characteristics.
The well-chosen cast is distinguished by Ling as the honorable public defender and Peter Donat as a gray-suited government careerist. As the hanging judge, Tsai Chin's apt performance is stitched straight out of Madame Mao's cretinous cloth. Chin's icy performance is, perhaps, the year's scariest.
RED CORNER
MGM
A Jon Avnet film
Producers Jon Avnet, Jordan Kerner,
Charles B. Mulvehill, Rosalie Swedlin
Director Jon Avnet
Screenwriter Robert King
Executive producers Wolfgang Petersen,
Gail Katz
Director of photography Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Production designer Richard Sylbert
Editor Peter E. Berger
Music Thomas Newman
Co-producers Martin Huberty, Lisa Lindstrom
Casting David Rubin, Pat Pao
Costume designer Albert Wolsky
Supervising sound edior George Waters III
Visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jack Moore Richard Gere
Shen Yuelin Bai Ling
Bob Ghery Bradley Whitford
Lin Dan Byron Mann
David McAndrews Peter Donat
Ed Pratt Robert Stanton
Chairman Xu Tsai Chin
Lin Shou James Hong
Li Cheng Tzi Ma
Running time -- 119 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
With Richard Gere starring as a U.S. lawyer unjustly facing a death sentence in China, the film has obvious marketing potential. Further, MGM marketeers could have a field day if visiting Chinese bigwig Jiang Zemin grouses about the film, potentially winning mainstream voters, err, viewers with his negative endorsement. We can see the Sunday quote ads now.
Except for the People's Republic of Berkeley and some old-time lefties at the universities, expect "Red Corner" to win some friendly, mainstream viewership.
In this timely scenario, Gere stars as Jack Moore, a smooth corporate lawyer for a communications conglomerate who has traveled to China to close the first satellite deal with the Chinese government. A man of the world (or as we say in the biz, the global community), Moore celebrates his salesmanship with a fetching Chinese beauty who lures him to her boudoir and, clink-clink, after a night of amour, Moore is jolted upright by Chinese soldiers: He is covered with blood and the woman is dead on the sofa.
Due process in China is not a protracted affair: It largely means a four-hour trial and a 99% conviction rate. For capital offenses, it means a bullet to the head within a week of sentencing and a bill to the survivors for the bullet. Even Marcia Clark and Tom Darden might prosecute successfully there.
"Red Corner" is gripping drama during these scenes of incarceration, as Moore is ramrodded through the system. Not allowed U.S. counsel, and with no leading barrister in China willing to the take the case, he is assigned the system's version of a lowly public defender (Bai Ling).
While screenwriter Robert King's scenario is a scorching indictment of Communist-court thuggery, it's structured along the lines of an old-time melodramatic potboiler. The smart viewer will soon notice that it's buttressed by the standard, film-noir framework, as "Red Corner" begins to box itself in on too many fronts. Essentially, the film has the feeling of being perfected to death.
From its "Midnight Run" pinion, the film wobbles under the weight of too many cinematic ingredients: the psychologically wounded hero (the death of Moore's wife and daughter is glibly noted), basted over with an emerging romance between, natch, Moore and his comely defender, rushed to climax with an ending that is straight out of the Perry Mason school of case-solving and then ended with a schmaltzy, airport departure that would have been the wonk ending for "Casablanca" had the market-manic, star-power types been in charge of the studios back then.
Although narratively it's all a bit much, one must commend director Jon Avnet for keeping things generally on track and our interest maintained. Except for some expressionistic camera angles at the end, "Red Corner" is played close to the vest aesthetically and is somewhat lackluster visually.
In this everybody's-a-victim age, Gere's character truly is a victim as he endures a Kafkaesque, brutal and terrifying experience with no support or personal recourse. However, the character himself is too polished with knight-in-shining-armor characteristics.
The well-chosen cast is distinguished by Ling as the honorable public defender and Peter Donat as a gray-suited government careerist. As the hanging judge, Tsai Chin's apt performance is stitched straight out of Madame Mao's cretinous cloth. Chin's icy performance is, perhaps, the year's scariest.
RED CORNER
MGM
A Jon Avnet film
Producers Jon Avnet, Jordan Kerner,
Charles B. Mulvehill, Rosalie Swedlin
Director Jon Avnet
Screenwriter Robert King
Executive producers Wolfgang Petersen,
Gail Katz
Director of photography Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Production designer Richard Sylbert
Editor Peter E. Berger
Music Thomas Newman
Co-producers Martin Huberty, Lisa Lindstrom
Casting David Rubin, Pat Pao
Costume designer Albert Wolsky
Supervising sound edior George Waters III
Visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jack Moore Richard Gere
Shen Yuelin Bai Ling
Bob Ghery Bradley Whitford
Lin Dan Byron Mann
David McAndrews Peter Donat
Ed Pratt Robert Stanton
Chairman Xu Tsai Chin
Lin Shou James Hong
Li Cheng Tzi Ma
Running time -- 119 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 10/29/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
More severed heads and less business about loving families is what the Canadian family film ''George's Island'' needs.
With a meandering narrative that shifts from a story about buried treasure and pirate ghosts to a contemporary tale of grumpy grandpas and busybody teachers, the modestly budgeted movie, despite a fairly impressive cast, too often plays like one of the parodies of such efforts by the old SCTV gang. However, there is enough here to while away a rainy afternoon, and OK business could develop.
The title location is an uninhabited spot near Halifax, Nova Scotia, where, in a prelude, Captain Kidd buries a stolen treasure and then murders his five piratical companions so that their skeletons can guard it.
Rushing into the present-day confines of a Halifax grammar school, we find young George Waters (Nathaniel Moreau) taking a rap from crabby Miss Birdwood (Sheila McCarthy) for believing the old story about buccaneers and treasure.
Before long, Miss Birdwood and social worker Mr. Droonfield (Maury Chaykin) have set out to separate George from his salty old grandfather, grog-quaffing Capt. Waters (Ian Bannen), a grouchy but lovable soul who spends his days shooting rock salt at young trespassers and spinning tales about pirates and ghosts.
After a very lengthy and very slow-moving account of George's removal from his home and placement in a foster home -- where he discovers a fellow victim, a girl from school -- the movie finally gets down to combining the two tales when everyone, human and otherwise, ends up on the haunted island at midnight on Halloween.
Much time is wasted on feeble attempts at adult caricature, with the broad lampoons at teacher, social worker and foster parents both too weak and too precious for young heads. McCarthy plugs away doggedly at her serio-comic teacher, but Chaykin never makes much of an impression as the weak-willed social worker. Bannen makes the most heroic attempts at performance of all, but he is undermined by the film's recessive direction.
In fact, director Paul Donovan, who also co-wrote the script, acts as though he could not make up his mind whether to make a larger-than-life fantasy, or a quieter and more modest poignant family drama. As a result, the film is stuck somewhere in between, doing justice to neither.
Cinematographer Les Krizsan, however, deserves some praise for his daytime exteriors, which nicely capture the cold clarity of the northern autumn.
GEORGE'S ISLAND
New Line
Salter Street Films and the National Film Board of Canada
Producer Maura O'Connell
Director Paul Donovan
Writers Maura O'Connell, Paul Donovan
Director of photography Les Krizsan
Editor Stephen Fanfara
Music Marty Simon
Production designer Bill Fleming
Color
Cast:
George Nathaniel Moreau
Miss Bordwood Sheila McCarthy
Capt. Waters Ian Bannen
Mr. Droonfield Maury Chaykin
Running time -- 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
With a meandering narrative that shifts from a story about buried treasure and pirate ghosts to a contemporary tale of grumpy grandpas and busybody teachers, the modestly budgeted movie, despite a fairly impressive cast, too often plays like one of the parodies of such efforts by the old SCTV gang. However, there is enough here to while away a rainy afternoon, and OK business could develop.
The title location is an uninhabited spot near Halifax, Nova Scotia, where, in a prelude, Captain Kidd buries a stolen treasure and then murders his five piratical companions so that their skeletons can guard it.
Rushing into the present-day confines of a Halifax grammar school, we find young George Waters (Nathaniel Moreau) taking a rap from crabby Miss Birdwood (Sheila McCarthy) for believing the old story about buccaneers and treasure.
Before long, Miss Birdwood and social worker Mr. Droonfield (Maury Chaykin) have set out to separate George from his salty old grandfather, grog-quaffing Capt. Waters (Ian Bannen), a grouchy but lovable soul who spends his days shooting rock salt at young trespassers and spinning tales about pirates and ghosts.
After a very lengthy and very slow-moving account of George's removal from his home and placement in a foster home -- where he discovers a fellow victim, a girl from school -- the movie finally gets down to combining the two tales when everyone, human and otherwise, ends up on the haunted island at midnight on Halloween.
Much time is wasted on feeble attempts at adult caricature, with the broad lampoons at teacher, social worker and foster parents both too weak and too precious for young heads. McCarthy plugs away doggedly at her serio-comic teacher, but Chaykin never makes much of an impression as the weak-willed social worker. Bannen makes the most heroic attempts at performance of all, but he is undermined by the film's recessive direction.
In fact, director Paul Donovan, who also co-wrote the script, acts as though he could not make up his mind whether to make a larger-than-life fantasy, or a quieter and more modest poignant family drama. As a result, the film is stuck somewhere in between, doing justice to neither.
Cinematographer Les Krizsan, however, deserves some praise for his daytime exteriors, which nicely capture the cold clarity of the northern autumn.
GEORGE'S ISLAND
New Line
Salter Street Films and the National Film Board of Canada
Producer Maura O'Connell
Director Paul Donovan
Writers Maura O'Connell, Paul Donovan
Director of photography Les Krizsan
Editor Stephen Fanfara
Music Marty Simon
Production designer Bill Fleming
Color
Cast:
George Nathaniel Moreau
Miss Bordwood Sheila McCarthy
Capt. Waters Ian Bannen
Mr. Droonfield Maury Chaykin
Running time -- 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
- 10/28/1991
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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