THE CORRUPTOR
As far as I know, Chow Yun Fat is the most charismatic man alive. If I was smart when I was a kid, I would have trained to become Chow Yun Fat as an adult. If there were some way I could pay money to actually become Chow Yun Fat, I'd probably be saving up. There is something powerful about his presence that I couldn't really describe with words. So insert you're cliche here - he's The Man, he's the Master, he's God. I haven't seen all of his work, but I've seen enough of the basics (The Killer, Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow) to see that he's a lot more than a gunslinging badass. He's a great actor. Unfortunately, his American debut The Replacement Killers was only interested in the gunslinging badass side of his persona. He pulled off the role (with minimal English) and his charisma was powerful enough to hold the movie. But fortunately The Corruptor - while no The Killer - is a much better vehicle for his talents.
The new film reminds me more of Hard Boiled than anything else - sort of an American take on that brand of HK crime epic. There's a gang war, rival cops, confusion about who's on which side. There's no shootout in a teahouse, but there's one in a lamp store. There's even a scene where Wahlberg walks around with a toothpick hanging out of his mouth, which may or may not be an homage to Tequila's habit in Hard Boiled. Of course, The Corruptor's gun battles and miscellaneous mayhem, while pretty extravagant by American standards, don't have the same balletic grace and adrenaline pumping power of Woo's films. And I would understand if someone found the portrayal of Chinese gangs, prostitutes and crooked cops offensive in the context of an American movie (although I think the movie -- perhaps due to the influence of Woo's films -- goes to unusual length to add ambiguity and dimension to the white-cop-comes-into-Chinatown scenario). I'm also a fan of Mark Wahlberg. I think his performance in Boogie Nights should have won him an Oscar. He's talented enough to make me forget about his past as a racist hoodlum and, worse, an extremely bad bubble gum rapper. But like I told a co-worker before the screening, "He's not gonna rap, is he? Then there's nothing to worry about." Outside of Boogie Nights, Wahlberg mostly exudes a boyish innocence that makes him very likable. I enjoyed his work in Traveller and The Big Hit (which had some extremely bad comic moments but went far to establish Wahlberg as a likable and agile action hero). His role here isn't quite as consistent, but it works, and I'm not sure there's anyone else I would have rather seen in the role. His best moments are on the too rare occasions when he gets a real chemistry going with Chow, like in the scene where they're staking out a drug house and he teases Chow by pretending to misinterpret his comment as a confession of deep love. The shootouts are pretty long, but they never give you the same "Oh my god, am I really seeing this?" shock of, say, the hospital shootout in Hard Boiled. Still, they have more punch than standard Hollywood fare. I particularly liked the drawn out gunbattle/car chase, even if the style is somewhere in between the kind of fluid editing I prefer and the incomprehensible Bruckheimer style that I usually despise. The storyline is fairly standard but it's more quick paced and complicated than your usual cop movie. I'm embarrassed to admit that I couldn't even keep up with a few of the story points. I don't think it's a particularly well written film but it's better than I expected, improving as it builds. What struck me is that by the end of the movie I really did care about Chow's character and wasn't sure how I wanted the film to end. In the last act he has become, by the usual action movie standards, "the bad guy," but Wahlberg and the audience (me, anyway) still like him. In real life, I don't think crooked cops - hell, straight cops - are exactly cool. (Sure, a society may need rules, but you gotta wonder about someone who actually wants to be the guy to enforce them. And then when they don't even want to follow the rules themselves, is there any arguing that they are soulless bastards?) So I found myself torn wondering if I'd rather see Wahlberg and internal affairs bust a corrupt cop who had it coming, or see Chow - the man, the master, God - get away scott free. And while I was struggling with this, I realized that the movie was working on me. The Corruptor isn't the masterpiece we're all hoping King's Ransom (Chow's long rumored reunion with Woo) will be, but it's light years ahead of the could-be-straight-to-video formulaic junk of The Replacement Killers. It's worth it just for the joy of Chow's acting - he's not just the cocky badass, he's also the jokester, the brooder, the guy who's been betrayed, the guy who cooks. It's a real role, and he eats it up. It's also notable that his English skills have improved immensely - I think he speaks it better than Jackie Chan, who's been trying for much longer. I wish The Corruptor had opened big so that our man could be considered "bankable." This is an actor who should get to do whatever the hell he wants.
--Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss
"I write rhymes so fresh I try to bite my own verses." --Tash
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