Jack Moore (Richard Gere) is an American visiting Beijing to sell American TV to the communist. He spends the night with a local woman and finds her murdered the next morning. He's arrested for killing a general's daughter. Everybody wants him to confess including his defense lawyer Shen Yuelin (Bai Ling). His contract is lost. There is a high level conspiracy at work.

This is a slow moving thriller. Jack Moore has little rooting interest and he acts as an entitled Westerner right from the start. It would be more compelling to have him overwhelmed as the initial reaction. As for the realism, I doubt a kangaroo court is somehow unknown in China. If anything, the objectivity shown by some of the characters is nice for the Chinese people. There is still an out-of-date style to the setting. The China being portrayed doesn't feel correct. The plot moves way too slowly. At 2 hrs, it's way too long. In the end, the plodding pace takes a toll.

Wolfgang Peterson has shown he can direct a suspenseful and kinetic movie with "Das Boot," a splendid evocation of life inside a crowded steel tube. His work since then has been spotty, more commercial than I'd have hoped. This movie is an improvement. I'd expected a thorough condemnation of everything about the People's Republic of China, especially given Richard Gere's devotion to Tibet. Yet, if this is occasionally clunky and confusing, it's still not bad. I found it engaging.

The narrative follows Gere who is framed for the murder of a beautiful model in Beijing and by dint of sheer determination on the part of himself, whom the court in the person of the grim battle ax behind the bench insists on calling "the Accused Moore", and on the part of his court-appointed defense counsel, Bai Ling, who begins as an ordinary uninterested subject with the PRC boot on her neck, and gradually warms up to Gere and procedural due process, the chemistry between them can best be described as "two people."

I said it was engaging. One of the reasons it's engaging is the appearance and performance of Bai Ling as Gere's public defender. She is one alluring young lady. Imagine if Audrey Hepburn had been born in China instead of the Netherlands. Yum. She so petite and delicate it seems as if any rough house might break one of her long bones. Since joining the global community, China has come up with a string of colorful movies and equally colorful actresses -- Gong Li to Bai Ling. Gere gives one of his better performances. He manages to convincingly project terror and that's not his strong suit as an actor. I like Richard Gere though. He was my co-star in the unforgettable, umm, wait, it will come to me -- YES, "No Mercy." He had a little trouble with some of his scenes but I helped him out.

So basically it's a tale of two stalwarts against the rules of a rigid and ruthless culture in which the best way to avoid execution is to plead guilty to murder. It's not exactly a courtroom drama though, nor a prison tale. Gere manages to escape and jump clumsily from one rooftop to another while being chased by mean-looking Chinese cops. I had a feeling that Peterson had left this scene in, though only weakly justified, for fear the audience might be getting impatient at having to listen to all that Mandarin Chinese, much of it with no subtitles. I certainly got impatient listening to Mandarin when I had to take a class in it.

The courtroom scenes are especially bewildering because, first, they didn't make much sense to me, and second, the climactic scene is so agitated and noisy. Something to do with a general and a package of American television programs with which Gere intended to pollute Sinitic culture. And not even a nod in the direction of General Tso's chicken. Yes, disappointing.

Still, the scene of parting between Gere and Ling at the airport is handled with affection and given a silky texture, as of a Chinese robe, with the emotional content muted and no kiss in sight. It reminded me of the climax of "Casablanca" -- "Where I go, you can't follow," and so on, except here the gender roles are reversed. Overall, it's not badly done.

For about a dozen years, it was hard to find too many films Richard Gere made which weren't interesting and well-made. This was no exception. Once again, he "delivers the goods" and is involved in an interesting story.

Gere, a follower, I believe, of the Dalai Lama whom the Communists forced out of Tibet, uses this film to get his shots in at his mentor's enemy. Anyone who thinks this is just a coincidence is pretty naive. Nonetheless, the facts support the film's stark, brutal portrayal of Communist China's leadership. At the very least, it shows a regime unwilling to hear both sides of a story. (Hollywood has often given the same treatment to the U.S. government, showing it more often in a corrupt light, which is ludicrous compared to restrictive Communist China.)

Anyway, Gere really dominates this film, being in almost every scene. This is your basic frame-up-then-prove-your-innocence-in-court story. It keeps your attention throughout although I thought the ending was a bit confusing because things happened almost too fast for the viewer to take in. At two hours, the film could have been trimmed a tad but the lulls in here were not much.

Overall, an underrated film and unjustly criticized by the national critics, most of whom don't like it when communism is bashed.