Poor Chow Yun-Fat: he pays his dues in HK cinema, rising to Asian superstar, and gets a crack at Hollywood fame only to share the limelight with an ex-boy-band singer/underwear model in a mediocre crime drama.
The Corrupter, directed by James Foley, opens promisingly enough with a shootout in a shop that could have been straight out of a John Woo movie, but soon settles into tedious mode with the introduction of Mark Wahlberg, who exudes all the personality of a dim sum dumpling. Wahlberg plays cop Danny Wallace, assigned to the Asian Gang Unit in New York, working alongside Lt. Chen (Yun-Fat), who is in the pocket of the Tong triads. It eventually turns out that Wallace is internal affairs, his job to collect the dirt on Chen, but predictably, he comes to realise that although Chen isn't playing by the rules, he isn't such a bad cop after all. Yawn.
There's quite a lot of shooting, with satisfyingly bloody squib-work, and a half-decent car chase scene midway that results in the deaths of numerous innocent bystanders, but this is heavily outweighed by the forgettable drama, which isn't helped by some dreary guff about Wallace's strained relationship with his father (played by Brian Cox). It wouldn't be long before Chow Yun Fat returned to his homeland to make films, and judging by The Corrupter, who could blame him?
The Corrupter, directed by James Foley, opens promisingly enough with a shootout in a shop that could have been straight out of a John Woo movie, but soon settles into tedious mode with the introduction of Mark Wahlberg, who exudes all the personality of a dim sum dumpling. Wahlberg plays cop Danny Wallace, assigned to the Asian Gang Unit in New York, working alongside Lt. Chen (Yun-Fat), who is in the pocket of the Tong triads. It eventually turns out that Wallace is internal affairs, his job to collect the dirt on Chen, but predictably, he comes to realise that although Chen isn't playing by the rules, he isn't such a bad cop after all. Yawn.
There's quite a lot of shooting, with satisfyingly bloody squib-work, and a half-decent car chase scene midway that results in the deaths of numerous innocent bystanders, but this is heavily outweighed by the forgettable drama, which isn't helped by some dreary guff about Wallace's strained relationship with his father (played by Brian Cox). It wouldn't be long before Chow Yun Fat returned to his homeland to make films, and judging by The Corrupter, who could blame him?