THE CORRUPTOR
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. New Line Cinema Director: James Foley Writer: Robert Pucci Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Mark Wahlberg, Ric Young, Elizabeth Lindsey
If "The Corrputor" were widely shown throughout the world and taken at all seriously, tourism as we know it in New York's most popular ethnic neighborhood would grind to a halt. Directed by James Foley and photographed in a noir style by Juan Ruiz-Anchia, Robert Pucci's tale of conflicting loyalties features the usual shoot-ups and car chases that threaten to make it yet another wide-screen video game. Yet the film is partially redeemed by a solid performance from the magnetically handsome Chow Yun-Fat as a detective on the take whose relationship with his partner (played by Mark Wahlberg) is at first contentious. Once a proper view of his colleague takes root, he becomes a sadder, wiser, reclaimed man. There's even the customary friction between the local police and the FBI. We've been through this theme quite a few times before, and Robert Pucci's screenplay breaks no new ground, but Howard E. Smith's editing helps to keep the chases fleet, the explosions cataclysmic, and the body count high.
Director Foley's vision is of a Chinatown that hasn't a single tourist or an honest Chou Wonton, but there is an ample supply of happy hookers, forlorn illegal immigrants, and a pair of battling gangs that make Pell Street look like a modern Shiloh and Mott Street a contemporary Gettsburg.
A neighborhood compulsively on the take with the Tongs and the Fuks (pronounced "Fooks and so-named because they were originally from China's Fukien province) eager for the lion's share of the spoils. Heroin and hookers mean big bucks for the squads of thugs who operate on this turf, the latter supplied by Chinese illegals smuggled to the land of liberty at a charge of $40,000 per and compelled to work off their indentured servitude as prostitutes. When Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg) is assigned to the police precinct manned mostly by Chinese-Americans, he incurs the hostility of officer Nick Chen (Chow Yun-Fat), not because Danny is white, but because, according to Nick, "he's green." The assignee comes across as a Goody Two-shoes who is more eager than the ethnic cops to protect the good people of Chinatown. Though studies have recently shown that the vast majority of police use their pieces not a single time in their entire careers, Danny blasts away almost from his first day on the new beat. In fact the detective duo with their 9mm issue regularly mow down their opponents, who are armed with Uzi-style firepower. As is typical in this genre, the two cops save in other's lives in turn, which bonds them forever, but when Nick--who is in the pocket of mobster Henry Lee (Ric Young)--is ordered to kill his colleague, he is as conflicted as Paul Vitti in Harold Ramis's "Analyze This."
Mark Wahlberg, a handsome performer who stood out in a better role in the far superior "Boogie Nights" is soft-spoken throughout and convinces no one in the audience (to say nothing of his partner) that he's a cop, but the reverse is true of Chow Yun-Fat who like Jackie Chan has shifted from the Hong Kong action market to Hollywood's bigger bucks. Chow's every emotion shows easily on his finely-chiseled face, though he did better when facing off with Mira Sorvino in "Replacement Killers." Under the direction of John Woo-- who is every bit the cop-picture director that James Foley is not--he wowed his cult audience seven years ago with "Hard Boiled," the all-time favorite of online film critic Steve Kong. "The Corruptor" is a convoluted clutter, even tacking on a subplot involving Danny's desperate cop-turned-bad father for no reason other than to confuse us further. What a shame that director Foley had to be stuck with this project considering his brilliance at the helm of one of the touchstones of all movies dealing with the human capacity for corruption, "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Rated R. Running Time: 111 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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