The Corruptor

Starring Chow Yun-Fat and Mark Wahlberg
Screenplay by Robert Pucci
Directed by James Foley
website: www.corruptor.com

IN SHORT: For fans of Ronin

Cranky's got it all figured out; about the Asian star influx hitting American shores. Jackie Chan fights with his hands and cracks jokes. Chow Yun-Fat prefers guns and busting heads. His films (two seen so far) still need to work out the balance between story and pyrotechnics.

The Corruptor is a full fifty minutes of gunfire and explosions until you get to what is a rather substantial and substantially complicated hour of story. It is intricate enough that it would have been compelling and transfixing had I not been bored to tears by the pyrotechnics. By the time the story REALLY kicks in, I'd lost 90% of my interest. Same feeling I had about Ronin a couple of month's back, though this story is better.

Nick Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) is top dog at the New York PD's Asian Gang Unit. He doesn't care much for constitutional criteria and probably wishes he could carry high capacity rapid fire weaponry like the new gang on the street, the Fukienese Dragons do. Chen maintains law and order by occasionally dipping his finger (literally and figuratively) into the pie, generously sampling from the prostitution and gambling rackets being run by the old fashioned Chinese tongs. Imagine how po'd he gets when his new assistant is a rookie white guy Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg) looking to earn his detective's gold badge. It may be up to Chen to corrupt Wallace, but all may not be as it seems . . .

That being said, the real story is a lot more than eager rookie versus on the take cop looking to guard his territory. I can't tell you more, 'cuz if you make it through (and more to the point, enjoy) the first 50 minutes, you're really going to dig deep into the twists and turns that the story takes in the last hour.

As far as date flicks go, this one's for the guys. I'm splitting the baby on the rating 'cuz by the time I should've really cared for the story, I could've cared less.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to The Corruptor, he would have paid...

$4.00

Pay per view for me. $5.00 date flick level for GenXers.

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