recommended

A lot of fun.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The Corrupter rides high on style and action, some of it's action sequences are awesomely and coolly shot. Parts of that car chase were breathtakingly thrilling, I felt I was there. It's a huge surprise, considering the film is directed by James Foley who makes films I LIKE, he's best still being in my opinion, the very underrated, At Close Range. A second inning onto the American market, Chow Yun Fat, lives this film up. I agree, he is the coolest Asian actor, who can act. Speaking of actors, their all terrific. Wahlberg's solid as the young rookie, undercover cop, partnered with the shady head of the Asian task force, Fat, who thinks he can play on both sides of the law and still come out clean and cool, like his parading self. Ric Young who's the godfather of Chinatown, controlling the whole corrupt show, while buying a few cops, is so slick and slimy, in his role, he's lovable, a big paunchy China doll. Most impressive though as rising hood, climbing up the ladder, very quick before his time, is Byron Mann, as Bobby Vu, while too, I also liked Brian Cox, always solid, as Wahlberg's, bum of a gambling, ex cop, and weathered father, who always implores his son to get him out of his indebted messes. Too, The Corrupter has an darn interesting story, if sometimes confusing, and this I think could be it's fault, where to un confuse it, you might have to wrack your brain a bit. But it has more meat to it, than Chow's last simple storied, show and cool action piece, The short, sharp, and sweet actioner, The Replacement Killers. Also I liked Paul Ben Victor as the Head FBI chief, butting heads with Fat, a mutual and silent hate exchanged. Fat shows great emotion, especially in parts where he finds out, he's bitten off more than he can chew. Too, you will notice some faults in some action parts of The Corrupter, but Foley, has crafted a very slick action pic, the early scene with Fat shooting up a light store, had me underestimating the action side of it, when I saw it at the cinema in 99. From here, it was confirmed I was in for one hell of a ride. The movies cool from the word go, and I mean from the word "Go" the cool, deviously, and shady fitting music score by Carter Burwell as the opening credits fade in and out of The larger font movie Title was an impressive start, where an explosion in the first scene, is a great invitation, which you'll get here among a little bit of T and A, too that doesn't go astray, where Fat always looks after his partner. The action finale on that big ship, even though played out a bit, is climactic, involving and again, cool, if shockingly affecting, not just for one thing. Foley too, plays around with some beautifully overhead shots of the big Apple. Here's a film he should be proud of, despite a lot of negativity from a few real movie critics, towards it. I almost love this as much as ACR. One of the coolest films you'll ever see.

I am really annoyed as the Advertiser, our local newspaper, didn't give a review of the Corrupter this week it was released. They usually review all of the films released during the week and it seems that the Corrupter missed out, which is really annoying. Anyway, knowing that my tastes generally diverge greatly from those of reviewers, they would probably have given it a one star and labelled it as a pointless movie with lots of violence. This I would object to because Chow Yun Fat is an absolutely brilliant actor and most of the movies that I have seen that he has been in I really enjoy. Okay, Hard Boiled was little more than a huge gunfight through a hospital, but it was still a great movie.Chow Yun Fat is a highly decorated cop in New York's Chinatown. One day a white cop joins up, much to the annoyance of the other cops in the Asian vice squad as they are Asian and a white man does not know how Chinatown runs. It seems that this new cop is an eager and naïve boy who wants to change Chinatown, but as Fat says, "you don't change Chinatown, Chinatown changes you." The new cop is portrayed through the movie as being the epitome of innocence caught in the middle of a dangerous a violent world that is Chinatown. The movie opens with a shop exploding and then the members of the Fookanese Dragons, a gang trying to take over from the ruling Tong gang, kill the owner of the store. This violence is contrasted with the almost innocent life of the white cop, who we then learn has a father who is in a lot of trouble with the mafia due to gambling debts.There are two themes that run through this movie, that of shattered hope and that of corruption: even the most honoured and respected people have a corrupt side, while even the most corrupt can be capable of huge amounts of good. This is in contrast with Divorcing Jack where the corrupt are trying to create peace, only to have their corruption exposed and the peace being shattered. In the Corrupter, the corrupted are sought after, but even with the evidence to expose the corrupted, it is put aside for they are very much capable of performing great deeds.I thought that this movie was going to be predictable. It is not. As soon as you learn that the white cop is in internal affairs working to expose Fat's corruption, we expect then to turn on each other and begin to fight. The movie is not that shallow. As we remember from the quote made: you don't change Chinatown, Chinatown changes you. The internal affairs officer has a purpose but the corruption then seeps into even his most resolute honour. The FBI are portrayed as rather nasty individuals, though they are simply obsessed with their job, and they hide themselves away behind desks, coming out only to claim fame for somebody else's bust.Internal affairs isn't much liked here, but we do sympathise for the white cop because he has experienced what it is like on the street and he is as affected by it as everybody else. He is there to collect evidence against Fat, but in reality he finds himself becoming more closer and loyal to him, when in the end Fat chooses not to shoot but to move to save his life. One cannot expect to move into Chinatown and change everything - rather they need to become a part of it, accepted by it so that the evil may be rooted out and destroyed.The main crime here is slavery. This is where the shattered hope theme comes in. Asians are illegally imported into New York for a price, and then the price is jacked up forcing them to work as prostitutes. Those who refuse are simply killed and dumped into trash cans. It makes one think about the whole idea of America being a better place. They come out to America (and Australia) expecting a better life but find themselves trapped on the streets with no money and having to degrade themselves by selling their bodies to people who simply want to abuse them. This is not the better life that they hoped for.We may all snarl and growl at criminals, but what many of us forget is that this is a harsh and uncaring world, and some people are thrown into situations which they do not know what they are doing and once they are there, they can never get out again. Drug use is the most common example, for they can find themselves without money and jobs and desperate for the drug and thus they must resort to violence to get it. In a way we should not be hating them and calling for them to be locked up in gaol. The true villains are really very few. Many of the criminals are foolish or simply caught up in something that they never expected to land up in. As such we should be helping them not causing them to be cast out.I have digressed from the movie, but we do see are very dark and miserable world here. A world where idealistic youths can't change. This is a real world with real problems that simply cannot be solved by locking people up or even by shooting them.

Really intense action, entertaining! This movie shows some great action scenes, really intense sometimes, that makes you get deep attention to it, but this attention is primarily focused in most part of the movie trying to understand the why and where of all the events shown; in a good part of the film you see great actions scenes, but don't understand why are happening!. A great entertaining action films about one of the hardest challenges that a cop can face!ABOUT THE MOVIE: In this movie, about an Asian cop that works cases on Chinatown - New York (Nick Chen - Chow Yun Fat), and a White Cop that strictly followed the academy instructions that is suddenly assigned to that jurisdiction (Danny Wallace - Mark Wahlberg); Chen didn't liked this new partner. They are somewhat close to the mafia of Chinatown leaded by Henry Lee (Ric Young) and Benny Wong (Kim Chan); while working,some police of internal affairs follow Nick and Danny to find corrupt relationship between them and the mafia, this cop unit is leaded by Schabacker (Paul Ven-Victor). The main objective of Nick is to take down a gang of young boys that is very violent and is terrifying the neighborhood, the Fukiense Dragons leaded by Bobby Vu (Byron Mann), Chen and Danny manages to infiltrate to this band trough Jack (Jon Kit Lee), a boy new in the gang and whose girlfriend was protected in change of information. Trough the mission, Danny has to face the shadow of his father Sean Wallace, who was a corrupt police officer (Brian Cox). In this movie you can get involve in one of the most hard works that a police officer can have, in a difficult and violent place, with intense racism (against people different from Asian race), violent gangs, illegal immigrants, drugs, guns, great drug dealers and bosses, prostitution, killings, and of course, the cancer of our century - corruption.6/10

Wahlberg was meant to play this role, which may be his best yet. It will be a cop movie classic, esp. with the realistic portrayal of Chinatown (I have lived near there in San Francisco for 14 years). Brutal, but honest, it shows the ubiquitous racism of all races. The Chinese Triads still exist in sex and drug smuggling. The "sweatshops" are somewhat better now, but the simpleminded racism still exists on all sides. Despite the usual snooty superciliousness of most critics, I thought the characters were quite well developed building up to a human aspect that the audience identifies with. It is true in San Francisco that cops in my city surrender to the inevitability of street crime in the poorer sections of the city.