Paul Andrews The Corrupter is set in New York City where decorated veteran detective Nick Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) who operates in New York's Chinatown, trying to keep the peace & prevent a turf war between rival Chinese gangs. Rookie cop Danny Wallace (Mark Whalberg) is assigned to Chen's team, the only problem is that he is American, a white American. Chen is unhappy at first but decides to try & teach Wallace the way things go in Chinatown while trying to prevent Wallace getting himself killed. During a drugs bust they arrest an undercover FBI agent, then soon after the FBI agent is killed in a Chinatown hit. The FBI think there's a leak in Chen's department & Chen himself comes under pressure. With the violence escalating & gangs kill each other for all out control Chen & his team are caught in the middle of it...Directed by James Foley I thought The Corrupter was a really average cop drama thriller with very little to distinguish or recommend it, those look for some some decent gun-play & action in particular will be very disappointed. The script tends to go for slow burning drama rather than out & out action, there's an OK car chase & a few forgettable shoot-outs but nothing else. I also felt the script was too unfocused, there are various little subplots going on, the illegal immigrants, the prostitutes, Wallace's personal problems with his father, a gang war & struggle for power in Chinatown along with various office politics & red tape that ordinary cops have to deal with. It's all pretty dour stuff to be honest, nothing grabbed me or excited me or drew me in & I just ended up feeling pretty bored, at an hour & forty minutes long The Corrupter does take a fair bit of patience to sit through & I found I had lost mine way before the end credits started to roll. The character's are alright, as far as buddy buddy cop films go they are not typical though. Chen is written as a decent man who has to bend the rules to get things done & keep the peace while the fresh faced Wallace plays it strictly by the book at first but soon realises that life on the street has no rules, they are quite well fleshed out & drawn but they are stuck in such a bland cop drama that it's hard to care or get involved in their story. All in all I just didn't think The Corrupter added up to much, with an emphasis on drama rather than action this won't appeal to your average mainstream action fan.Even with a reasonable car chase about halfway through there was far less action in The Corrupter than I was expecting, even the shoot-outs & gun-play are dull. Filmed in New York & in Canada this looks nice enough with hat gritty, low colour documentary style cinematography that some may like while other's like me will find just bland & anonymous.Taking a paltry five million during it's opening weekend at the box-office The Corrupter is a hard sell, is it meant to appeal to those interested in drama? It's surely too shallow for that. Or is it meant to appeal to the action fan? Well, there's barely any action in it. I just can't see who would like this. The acting is alright, the performances are decent enough I suppose.The Corrupter is a film that I didn't like that much, sure it's well made & reasonably acted but with a bitty story & lack of action I was left distinctly underwhelmed. Average at best for what it is & nothing special.

zardoz-13 Chow Yun-Fat's second English language actioneer "The Corrupter" boasts a plot with greater narrative depth and stronger characterization than "The Replacement Killers," Chow's top-grossing U.S. feature film debut. Nevertheless, "Glengarry Glen Ross" director James Foley's cops & robbers saga lacks the visceral music-video bravura of Anton Fuqua's mythical gangster mow down epic. While Fuqua blew out all stops with his ballistic homage to John Woo in "The Replacement Killer," Foley adopts a 'reality-what-a-concept' focus a la Sidney ("Serpico" & "Prince of the City") Lumet in his treatment of a dirty cops crime chronicle. Good acting by Chow and a first-rate cast make this blood-stained, cultural murder mystery, with its share of surprises and shoot-outs, worth a second look."The Corrupter" concerns an uneasy alliance between veteran NYPD Detective Lieutenant Nick Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) and his new partner, rookie cop Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg of "Renaissance Man"). Wallace finds himself assigned to the Chinese dominated Asian Gang Unit after a turf war erupts between the Triads and the Fukienese Dragons in the Big Apple. Wallace and Chen investigate the Chinatown mob, headed by slippery, Janus-faced Oriental businessman Henry Lee (Ric Young of "Nixon") who skillfully plays both cops against each other as well as against the mob. Meanwhile, the Fukienese Dragons, run by vicious Bobby Vu (Byron Mann of "Catwoman"), are the culprits behind the latest bombings and shootings. Lee uses the Dragons to ice his immediate superior Uncle Bennie (Kim Chan of "Lethal Weapon IV"), so that Lee can take over the rackets without upsetting the Hong Kong mob.Initially, Lt. Chen and Danny cannot tolerate each other. Chen doesn't want the idealistic white cop on his team, but they come to respect each other after a series of near-death confrontations with trigger-happy goons. The complications stack up when Wallace busts a drug-dealer who is an undercover FBI agent. FBI Chief Schabacker (Paul Ben-Victor of "True Romance"), stomps into their precinct with a take-no-prisoners attitude. He has always suspected that Lt. Chen was in deep with Uncle Benny, and he wants Wallace to expose Chen. Meanwhile, Danny's seedy, ex-cop father, Sean Wallace (Brian Cox of "Rushmore"), shows up and asks Danny for some dough to help pay off his Mafia gambling debts. Danny has nothing but contempt for his dad, but Sean becomes Danny's conscience before the gunsmoke clears.Freshman scenarist Robert Pucci exploits Chinatown in "The Corrupter" for both its territorial as well as metaphorical iconography. As the title implies subtly but unmistakably, the crime lords who pay off the cops don't qualify as "The Corrupter" but rather the setting that mires them in the corruption of life. Not even the villains can avoid their fate in Chinatown, as Pucci points out with moody bits of dialogue like: "You don't change Chinatown; Chinatown changes you." Pucci's screenplay covers familiar territory, but he enlivens it with several twists and turns punctuated by hair-raising shoot-outs.Director James Foley tries his hand at a Tarantino through-the-gun-barrel darkly plot and shows himself equal to the task. Audiences may have a tough time with "The Corrupter." First, even if word-of-mouth propels this energetic buddy cop thriller beyond its meager opening day box office receipts, the tragic ending rules out any sequel. "The Corrupter" shares more in common with 1970s' cop movies like "Hustle" with Burt Reynolds. Second, while Pucci's screenplay stockpiles all the clichés and conventions of the police genre, Foley never lets action overshadow character. Forget the familiar bulletproof vest escape hatch or the miraculous recovery from multiple gunshot wounds a la "Lethal Weapon 1 thru 4." Foley furnishes some sizzling action sequences, but he never lets us forget that today's hero can quickly degenerate into tomorrow's crook. Nobody escapes "The Corrupter" without paying his dues. The guns may make the killers look cool, but these dastards cannot escape their comeuppance.One of the assets of "The Corrupter" is its solid acting. Undeniably, Chow Yun-Fat delivers his best performance to date. Chow displays greater range of expression and character here than even in his legendary Hong Kong epics. John Woo never got as spirited and animated a performance as Foley draws from Chow in "The Corrupter." As dapper Lt. Nick Chen, Chow reveals as much character with his body language as he does with his dialogue. Foley deliberately downplays Chow's signature gun-wielding antics when the superstar whirls while firing away with a pistol in each fist.Mark Wahlberg, last seen in "The Big Hit," gives a tight-lipped performance that quietly but effectively contrasts with Chow's gregarious chops. Soft-spoken and bespectacled, Danny Wallace grows as a character from the moment that he teams up with Chen. Wahlberg avoids any flashy Mel Gibson heroics.The support cast excels, too. With his silky-voiced speech patterns, Ric Young is believably wicked as a double-crossing crime lord who tires to burn the candle at both ends without getting singed. Paul Ben-Victor is appropriately abrasive as an FBI honcho who wants Chen's head on a platter. Oddly enough, Kim Chan stars as elderly crime lord named "Uncle Benny." Check out his death scene in "The Corrupter." Last summer, Chan played a similar Chinatown (as in Los Angeles) crime king in "Lethal Weapon 4." Foley's longtime lenser Juan Ruiz-Anchia's flashy, sharp-lensed photography thrusts audiences into the thick of the action. Foley and Ruiz-Anchia repeatedly provide awesome aerial night-time shots of the Big Apple.Altogether, "The Corrupter" rates as an above-average but violent cops and crime lords shoot'em up. No, the violence does not match John Woo's gory but stylist Hong Kong thrillers "The Killer" or "Hard Boiled" that both starred Chow, but "The Corrupter" contains an adequate amount of gunplay to satisfy genre fans.

Boba_Fett1138 It was surprising how brutal and straight-forward this movie actually was. It also at the same time made the movie a hard one to believe. I mean the Yun-Fat Chow character shoots criminals through the head at point blank for Christ sake and they give him medals for that! That's tough, even for a New York cop. It seems that they at all time try to aim for the head or heart, instead of just taking the criminal out by shooting in the leg or shoulder. And also innocent bystanders keep getting killed in the movie as if it means nothing. No way that this movie could had also still been made after 9/11.It's the sort of story that makes things unnecessarily hard on itself, by putting in too many twist and turns, characters and individual plot lines. After a while I simply just stopped carrying what the movie was all about. It was that uninteresting.Yun-Fat Chow and Mark Wahlberg really don't work well together. Normally this is good for a cop duo type of movie but however really not in this case, since it simply just not work out. Brian Cox also shows up in the movie. I love this guy but once you start thinking about it; is his role really necessary for the movie?The movie itself is fairly well made. With a different script the movie would had definitely been a better one. The directing is good and fast and feels right for this type of movie and some of the camera-work is also great, though it also becomes obviously in the movie that it didn't really had the highest budget thinkable.The action itself is fair. It's nothing too spectacular or memorable really. It features mostly the formulaic elements such as shoot-outs and one 'big' chase. It's forgettable, just like the rest of the movie.Not a completely terrible movie but a very forgettable one.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

bkoganbing If The Corrupter had been filmed back in the days of the studio system the only thing missing would have been Limehouse Blues on the soundtrack. Even given the fact that it was filmed on location right in New York City's Chinatown and I recognized a lot of the spots, it has the feel of one of those RKO noir type films with a couple of car chases thrown in. The location though really adds to the film.In The Corrupter the precinct of location is the fictitious 15th precinct which coincidentally enough is the one where Andy Sipowicz and the rest of those cops labored on NYPD Blue. Chinatown in Manhattan is actually in the NYPD Fifth precinct. A lot of police of Oriental ancestry get assigned there as a matter of course because of language skills. But Chow Yun Fat who heads the squad there does not need Mark Wahlberg assigned who's wet behind the ears. Additionally Wahlberg's dad was a former detective who got tossed out for a gambling problem that led to his downfall. The situation they've both got is a turf war going on in Chinatown between the old triads who like to run things with a minimum of headlines and a new crew of immigrants from China's Fukien province who are known as the Fukien Dragons. This is a really violent bunch who apparently just like to shoot things and people for enjoyment at times, make a lot of unnecessary noise.One thing I did like about The Corrupter was the fact that I've rarely seen films involving police chases where innocent bystanders get killed and injured. Here the collateral damage between the gangs and the police and the gangs is appalling. It couldn't be any other way because those narrow streets you see the police cars and the bad guys careening down are those in Chinatown.A few twists and turns in the plot give the film some added suspense. We only find out in the end who the real corrupt ones are.