"Red Corner" (15) Nationwide
Richard Gere has been persona non grata in China for several years now because of his condemnation of that country's policy in Tibet, so it's unlikely to worry him too much that his new thriller is likely to earn him a permanent position at the top of the Beijing government's Most Hated Movie Stars list (these things matter - just ask Disney). Directed with typical smoothness by Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, Up Close And Personal), Red Corner aims to do for the Chinese legal system what Gorky Park did for the preglasnost Moscow police, and the portrait it paints is not a pretty one. Gere plays a high-flying television executive, in Beijing to negotiate a lucrative satellite channel contract with high-ranking Party officials. Celebrating the deal in a fashionable nightclub, he meets a beautiful young model with whom he spends the night, waking the next morning to find her murdered. Flung into jail, Gere is faced with the unfamiliar and none-too-gentle strictures of the Chinese legal system, and assigned a public defender (Bai Ling) who herself seems convinced of his guilt. Despite this, Gere manages to slowly persuade her that he is innocent, and the two begin to unravel the threads of a conspiracy involving corruption at the highest levels of government.
Despite some moments of pure corniness (a laughable rooftop chase across the city towards the US embassy), and the kind of ending that gives melodrama a bad name, this is a very assured, well-crafted legal thriller, which tries harder than most American films not to be condescending about the society it depicts. Bai Ling's fine performance as the young idealist who believes in the justice of the system is crucial to the film's carefully constructed criticisms of corruption and nepotism in modern China. The American embassy officials are depicted as being just as venal as their Chinese counterparts, and the use of satellite TV as the plot McGuffin (shades of Rupert Murdoch) echoes the soft-liberal condemnation of Western media values which Avnet voiced in Up Close And Personal. Red Corner is no masterpiece, and it's certainly too long, but it has its pleasures along the way.
"The Replacement Killers" (18) Nationwide
Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-Fat gets his first big American role in this slick, glossy and violent action thriller whose undeniable style can't compensate for its total vacuousness. Appropriating many of the visual flourishes typical of Hong Kong cinema in general, and in particular of the films of John Woo (Chow's long-time collaborator who acts as executive producer here), Antoine Fuqua's directorial debut has some terrific gunfights and chases, but everything goes terribly wrong when the characters are required to open their mouths. The basic storyline, of a hitman who turns against his gangland boss when ordered to assassinate a small child, has familiar Woo-ish concerns with codes of honour and family loyalty, but the cardboard comic-strip characterisation does Chow no favours, and Fuqua's pop video background hasn't provided him with enough basic storytelling skills. Amidst all the muddle, though, Mira Sorvino, as Chow's feisty, unwilling sidekick, shines out like a beacon, proving again that she's one of the most engaging movie stars around at the moment. Give this woman her own action blockbuster now.
"Wild Man Blues" (Members and Guests Only) IFC
"You've got a hell of a town here. I know with a couple of valium I could really grow to love it," Woody Allen tells the bemused burghers of Bologna midway through Barbara Kopple's documentary about Allen's tour of Europe with his New Orleans-style jazz band. It's the kind of one-liner that audiences for Wild Man Blues will be waiting to hear, along with some revelations about "the real Woody", but the film's subject remains elusive and enigmatic throughout.
A documentary about Allen seems a fascinating but particularly problematic endeavour - after all, the man has spent most of his career parlaying elements of his own life into filmic fictions, while denying that he is the characters he plays. It would take a particularly cunning film-maker, therefore, to find a way under Allen's skin, and at one point it seemed as if the task might fall to Terry Zwigoff, who directed the brilliant, revealing Crumb a couple of years ago. Barbara Kopple, the respected documentary maker who finally ended up with the job, has produced a workmanlike film which will appeal to hardcore Woodyphiles but is unlikely to reach a broader audience.
Allen does seem like a grumpy old misanthrope, closer in character to his latest incarnation in Deconstructing Harry than any other. Throughout the tour, constantly accompanied by the young woman he refers to as "the notorious Soon Yi Previn", he hardly exchanges a word or spends any time with the rest of the band, seasoned old troupers who just seem glad to be along for the ride. We find that Soon Yi has never seen Annie Hall, and that she thinks Interiors is "long and tedious" (hear, hear). Moments later, the pair are standing on a balcony with a glorious view, but Woody has sunk into deep depression, musing on the condition of always wanting to be where you're not - "anhedonia", the original title of Annie Hall - and you start wondering who's really directing this film. Kopple's keep-the-camera-running style inevitably picks up some small, telling moments from time to time, but they feel like crumbs grudgingly dropped from the great man's table in the knowledge that otherwise there won't be a film, and there is clearly a contractual requirement to show a certain amount of footage of the music itself, which is not unenjoyable. But, like the glitterati who turn out around Europe for the concerts, the audience for Wild Man Blues is unlikely to be packed with fans of what Allen himself acknowledges is a rather archaic and esoteric form of music, and the film's most interesting theme is this perverse tweaking of the machinery of fame - Allen knows we're all here to see him, not to hear the music, but that doesn't stop him using his status to set up the tour. (Kopple rather clumsily emphasises this equivocal relationship with fame by lashing dollops of music from 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita on to the soundtrack). It seems that Woody doesn't like his audience very much, but he just can't leave us alone.
