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Review of Red Corner (Thomas Newman)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you need reinforcement that China is a place of nightmares for Westerners, in which case Thomas Newman's brutally challenging use of that country's stereotypical instrumental tones will further dissuade you from ever wanting to travel there.

Avoid it... if you have little tolerance for film music that inelegantly forces a socio-political dichotomy upon you, Newman's symphonic relief for the protagonists too disparately heroic despite yielding eight minutes of beautiful material for the album.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Red Corner: (Thomas Newman) Having your film banned in China is not necessarily a bad thing, though when the 1997 movie Red Corner received that honor, it was for understandable reasons. The film seems to exist only for three reasons; first, to serve as a vehicle for Richard Gere in the role of a virtuous and hot American businessman who makes Chinese men look ineffective and/or unattractive. Secondly, the movie feeds the stereotype of Asian women as being starved for a sexual encounter with men like Gere. Finally, and most importantly, Red Corner was a clear political shot aimed at China at the time, further demonizing the communist nation and its relatively primitive and brutal justice system. While masquerading as a courtroom drama, the film was inevitably received as further condemnation of the corruption in Chinese institutional systems, leaving little in the way of narrative depth or unexpected pathos to really distinguish its story. Gere plays an American businessman on the verge of completing a satellite communications deal with the communist government when he is arrested for allegedly killing the daughter of a prominent Chinese general. He spends the remainder of the film working with a beautiful, young female attorney who is skeptical of his claims of innocence but eventually helps the businessman uncover the plot against him. By the time Gere starts running around on the streets with a weapon, you know you're in pointlessly unlikely territory. The absence of truly compelling or unexpected socio-political concepts in Red Corner, despite the filmmakers' efforts to recreate immense Chinese locales in Los Angeles and utilize real footage of executions from that nation, caused the film to fade quickly from theatres after a poor critical response. The project represented the fourth and final collaboration between director Jon Avent and composer Thomas Newman in the 1990's, each score exploring disparate styles with varying levels of success. The tepid and underwhelming romantic environment of Up Close & Personal the previous year represented some of the least interesting music of Newman's career despite his attempts to infuse some international flavor into the otherwise sterile score. For Red Corner, the composer would go overboard with that unique instrumentation, bridging his lyrical sensibilities of the early 1990's with the more experimental tones of his 2000's works. The film clearly used its music as another means of emphasizing the frighteningly foreign environment of the locale, to which end Newman's approach is a success.

If ever a film required its original music to scare the hell out of someone with a heavy layer of oppressive, Chinese-flavored tones, Red Corner would be it, and Newman took the opportunity to push every element of that nation's musical stereotypes to scary levels. The conflict in the score is obvious, the orchestral ensemble and its inherent lyricism and fleeting warmth doing sonic battle with the erhu, zheng, saz, and a variety of other instruments that may not be all too uncommon to Newman's other works. He even slips in mournful female vocals at several poignant moments and brackets some cues on the album release with the sounds of Beijing traffic and pedestrians. Three separate musicians are credited for creating "drones" in Red Corner, and the score certainly contains a healthy amount of excessively brooding ambient tones in the bass region, perpetually trying to give the listener that "sinking feeling." The film's action sequences simply feature louder versions of this material. Some of the Chinese instrumental applications are quite compelling, but, outside of the "Main Title," this usage is typically meant to alienate rather than suggest the beauty that these instruments can convey in brighter circumstances. There exist only two significant motifs in Red Corner, the dark side of the work dominated by a progression that spends most of its time droning on key; early in the score, it's a three-note motif ("Main Title" and "Capitalism"), but it later dissolves into a brutal, more simplistic minor third alternation that culminates in the tension of "Verdict." The techniques of this idea smother most of the rest of the score, creating several unpleasant ambient cues starting immediately with "Communism." While this material doesn't really develop in the score, it remains interesting because of the instrumental colors. The other theme of Red Corner is its primary idea, existing for the female lawyer and previewed in the first half of "Main Title." It flourishes almost artificially in "Shen Yuelin" and "Remarkable Things," seeming to suggest that Western symphonic tones represent an American sense of justice aided by this character. The extremely tonal and victorious crescendos of these two cues, including remarkably crisp brass counterpoint, are so clean and heroic that they force-feed the political point of the cultural dichotomy with inelegant bravado. The latter cue, the finale, does conclude with an intentionally unresolved wail of female voice, which is a nice touch. On album, these two tracks are the main attraction, a welcome relief from the persistently troubled environment of the remainder. Three source tracks round out the challenging but usually engaging listening experience. Like the film, this music certainly gives you no desire to ever visit China.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 59:15

• 1. Red Corner (Main Title) (3:19) • 2. Communism (1:08) • 3. Da Bi Zi (Big Nose) (1:23) • 4. Dead Girl (2:00) • 5. The Beijing Hotel (1:55) • 6. Night Deeply Sunk (Chinese Traditional) (1:04) • 7. Severity (1:03) • 8. The People's Assessors (1:13) • 9. Capitalism (1:17) • 10. The Price of a Bullet (1:26) • 11. Tiananmen Square (1:48) • 12. Embroidering (Chinese Traditional) (2:16) • 13. Dazhalan Chase (2:43)

• 14. Leniency (1:54) • 15. House Rules (3:20) • 16. Full-Scale Incident (4:54) • 17. Shen Yuelin (2:56) • 18. Silence (1:48) • 19. Two Trials (1:44) • 20. The Purple Bamboo Melody (Chinese Traditional) (3:30) • 21. Detention Center 1 (1:33) • 22. Offer to Resign (1:24) • 23. Da Guan Lin Dan (Big Shot) (2:43) • 24. Verdict (1:00) • 25. Remarkable Things (5:03) • 26. Black (End Title) (4:51)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Red Corner are Copyright © 1997, Edel America Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 2/8/12 (and not updated significantly since).