The Corrupter
directed by James Foley
starring Chow Yun-Fat, Mark Wahlberg.
playing at theaters accessible to all - ie - multiplexes
(available on video)
*  *  1/2    (two and one half stars)
no time to read the whole review?
THE JIST of MY PROSE
Sure it's another film trying to ape John Woo's twin classics 'Hard-Boiled' and 'The Killer', but the darkness enveloping this collection of cliches almost makes them fresh again. Almost.. The characters may have little or nothing to do with the movie - but they are still strong and visceral.
The final word appears in the next to last paragraph : This is a movie with balls.

What a perfect title : 'The Corrupter'. This is a film that continually and simultaneously
offends and rewards the audience by interweaving familiar, if not cliched themes with
intense and original characters, challenging action setpieces and other ideas, which prove
more satisfying. As Mark Wahlberg and Chow Yun-Fat find out, everything in the world
of people dealing with people, whatever moral stance, is in some way corrupt. If the film
has one message that it’s trying to pass on, it’s that no matter how much bad dialogue or
predictability occurs on the screen, there’s always some fresh twist hiding amongst the
affront. It’s a great example of how expecting a total originality in the multiplex is
expecting far too much.' The Corrupter' seems to be a trial, awaiting a verdict regarding
it’s material : do we forgive it or do we accept it and take what we can? The case it builds
suggests that it has more innovation (strong characters, shocking violence, bold
contradictions, changing themes and surprising elements) than it does similarity
(buddy-cop team’s love-hate relationship, young cop with a father on the force, action
film self-consciousness and villains that are consistently bad shots as plot convenience).

 Nick Cheng (Yun-Fat) is an established cop, knowledgeable about the inner
workings of the Chinatown gangster struggle between the Tong family and the Fucanese
Dragons (sounds like a high school football team). Fresh on the scene is rookie cop
Danny Wallace (Wahlberg), ready to save the world - or at least Chinatown. They both
end up working with, against and for each other as they maneuver their way through their
morals and through the gangland that is New York’s Chinese District. They see action
everyday, mostly for our filmgoing enjoyment, which makes the film seem more like a
video game or a comic book at times, but again, keeps surprising us with the chances it’s
ready to take.

 There’s some really well-carved action extravaganzas. The car chase, which
pauses for a moment to give the bad guys a chance to hit some civilians as an act of pure
malevolence, boils over with brutal intensity and hard-as-nails roughness. There are some
shoot-outs that, although they don’t come close to, certainly evoke the work of John Woo
('The Killer', 'Hard Boiled').

 The movie keeps shifting gears in a good way. It keeps changing the kind of film
it wants to be and keeps me thinking, “I like where this is going” or “I like how this could
turn out”. Of course, it doesn’t always come to a point. It has it’s flaws like anything else.
Chow Yun-Fat continually fades back into the animated and cartoonish Chinese
stereotype, leaving his cool facade to smolder like an extinguished cigarette. For some
reason Danny’s glasses and their random necessity stood out to me, which gives the film
that amateurish feel. We know we’re at the helm of an accomplished director ('Glengarry
Glen Ross', 'At Close Range') with a blip or two ('Fear') - it’s a metaphor for meaning well,
for trying to give the film something more, but ending up with something less (the glasses
are more of a symbol for weakness than a tool for better eyesight).

 Finally, 'The Corrupter' is an icy and pitch-dark film. It has a brownish look, a
shadowed vibrancy and rides the rough edges of it’s story for a rush of realism and a tint
of somber deterioration. This is a movie with balls. The main characters have a good
camaraderie, but the film is not afraid to pass judgement or make them flawed. Although
they are a force of justice, they don’t always act it and the film never deifies them, even
when it appears to.

 If the verdict is originality in this tale of corruption of all kinds, it should be given
a sidenote that makes it very clear that the film is by no means perfect. But it gets an “E”
for effort.
 
 

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