Red Corner is a 1997 American mystery thriller film directed by Jon Avnet, and starring Richard Gere, Bai Ling and Bradley Whitford.

[3] Wealthy American businessman Jack Moore (Richard Gere) is on a trip to China attempting to put together a satellite communications deal as part of a joint venture with the Chinese government.

[5] While in production, director Jon Avnet filed suit against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after they refused to sign the agreed revised budget ($54 million for shooting in Los Angeles following abandoning a $49 million shoot on location in China which also included recognition of Avent's producer and director's participation including final cut privilege.

[7] Janet Maslin of The New York Times cited the Hitchcockian setup, that succeeds "in giving the word conviction double meaning."

Unlike such Chinese-made films as The Blue Kite, and To Live which criticize China with an insider's knowledge and detail, Red Corner plays like a xenophobic travelogue crossed with Perry Mason.

"[10] In his review in the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan called Red Corner a "sluggish and uninteresting melodrama that is further hampered by the delusion that it is saying something significant.

But its one-man-against-the-system story is hackneyed and the points it thinks it's making about the state of justice in China are hampered by an attitude that verges on the xenophobic.

[13] Total Film gave a 3 out of 5 star rating, stating that Red Corner was "A semi-powerful thriller let down by pedestrian direction and a lacklustre Richard Gere.

[18][19] Testifying before the United States Senate Committee on Finance, Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness on "censorship as a non-tariff barrier" in 2020, Gere stated that economic interests compel studios to avoid social and political issues Hollywood once addressed, "Imagine Marty Scorsese's Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, or my own film Red Corner, which is highly critical of the Chinese legal system.