While it has a lot of the right elements stacked up, The Corruptor can't capitalize on its star or story's main appeals.
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Something I often enjoy doing is looking at non-US actors who have either successfully or unsuccessfully crossed over into Hollywood. There are French actors like Vincent Cassel who has succeeded in supporting roles in movies like Black Swan or the Ocean's franchise while being a leading man in his native France, the Swedish born Max Von Sydow who somehow managed to be in The Seventh Seal AND Flash Gordon, and a bunch of action superstars from the Hong Kong film industry including Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen and perhaps the most successful of them all Michelle Yeoh (hell yeah). But lost in the shuffle is the man who basically defined Hong Kong cool in the 80s and 90s is Chow Yun-Fat whose biggest hit in America (at least with him in a starring role) was... 2000's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with the aforementioned Michelle Yeoh. So today I'm going to look into a vehicle that was made for Chow and see why it, and other films starring Chow, didn't catch on in America.
The Setup
Chow plays NYPD Lieutenant Nick Chen, who heads up the Asian Gang Unit and is trying to keep a turf war in Chinatown from spilling out into the streets. Brought into the fold to help him out is newbie Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg). But there's a few problems. First, Chen is an informant for one of the Chinatown gangs. And second, Danny is actually an officer for internal affairs...
The Corruptor is fine. It's basically like a Chinatown focused Infernal Affairs or Departed with a bigger emphasis on giant shootouts and everyone yelling at each other about jurisdiction and such. It should work better than this right? So why doesn't it? Let's dig in. We'll start with action.
American Action Editing is So Frustrating
The filmmakers and studios bringing in Chow Yun-fat, vaguely understood that Chow was a great guy to put in R-rated action movies with giant shootouts involving all kinds of guns, slow motion, and collateral damage.
So in his first starring role they cast him as an assassin in The Replacement Killers and as a morally grey cop in The Corruptor. Basically his two most famous roles (The Killer and Hard Boiled).
But those movies ruled for another big reason. They were directed by John Woo.
Now anyone who knows Woo will rightly associate him with things like a hero dual-wielding guns, unconventional shootout setups, slow-motion, and a Mexican stand off or two per movie. What can get lost in all of that, is how easy his very chaotic firefights are to follow.
The famous shootout across floors in Hard Boiled is just impressive because of the technical work, but because you can tell who Chow Yun-fat shot and who Tony Leung shot as it happens. Giant noise and debris be damned.
The Corruptor has the chaos down, but it's very difficult to follow. It's a lot of quick cuts and edits to give you the feeling of a giant firefight. Blended in with some highlight moments so you know just how dangerous the whole affair is or to indicate someone important got hit. Who shot them? Maybe you'll piece that together because they zoomed in on Wahlberg's gun before the other guy got hit, because the scene geography is all over the place.
As much as The Replacement Killers feels like a downgrade compared to Woo, even a young Antoine Fuqua knew to let the highlight reel moments stand out.
Close, But Not Quite: Chow's Character
While the shootouts are off base, this is the closest an American movie has been to nailing Chow's appeal as an actor, at least in Hong Kong movies. For all of the allegedly soft-spoken character's Chow has played he's actually more fun and interesting when he gets to be funny or charming. So his introduction in this movie, sarcastically taunting gangsters before getting into a shootout and fight before leaving with a one liner? That's perfect.
This is also the bait for when his seemingly unserious characters get REALLY serious really fast and he turns on the intensity. And there's moments for that here as well.
So what's the problem?
There's not enough. The movie gets so involved in all of the schemes and moves and countermoves, that it doesn't let Chow be an honest to goodness character who gets to blow up at superior officers.
He's also...always a paragon. This might seem like a slight nit-pick, but Chow doesn't play morally grey characters in his Hong Kong work. He's always steadfast and dedicated to the people around him. It's why his stoic turn in Crouching Tiger works.
He's also...always a paragon. This might seem like a slight nit-pick, but Chow doesn't play morally grey characters in his Hong Kong work. He's always steadfast and dedicated to the people around him. It's why his stoic turn in Crouching Tiger works.
It would be better if he was a straight-up villain vs. this attempt at a conflicted character.
Motivations?
Considering Mark Wahlberg is in this movie, it was really hard not to compare this movie to The Departed and in particular how it lays out the motivations of the Leo's undercover officer and Matt Damon's mole. The movie presents Damon and DiCaprio as differently but understandably motivated. DiCaprio is sent into undercover work because the higher ups don't think he'll belong with the other officers and have plans to use him in a role he'd be more suited to...playing a criminal. Whereas Damon's character is introduced by being seduced into the criminal life by a charming Jack Nicholson.
Here the motivations are harder to understand. Chow's cop rats out to a rival gang because he hates the other gang and Wahlberg is working with Internal Affairs to get a detective shield faster (which everyone acts like is a cowards way to do it vs. you know a reward for dangerous work?). The stuff that works best is these two kinda growing on each other, so they don't want to rat out or kill the other person. That's easy to understand.
Here the motivations are harder to understand. Chow's cop rats out to a rival gang because he hates the other gang and Wahlberg is working with Internal Affairs to get a detective shield faster (which everyone acts like is a cowards way to do it vs. you know a reward for dangerous work?). The stuff that works best is these two kinda growing on each other, so they don't want to rat out or kill the other person. That's easy to understand.
And considering the movie's name, you'd assume that Wahlberg's Wallace would be seduced by the dirty cop life that Chen presents, so much so that he has to pull himself out by the movie's end. There's pieces of it, but it's not quite there.
The Verdict: A Missed Opportunity
While it has a lot of the right elements stacked up, The Corruptor can't capitalize on its star or story's main appeals. 5/10
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