The Corruptor (Hong Kong Version) VCD

Starting with a basic good cop/bad cop premise the movie gives us Detective Nick Chen (Chow Yun-fat) introduced in an obligatory, overheated lamp store shootout. He's a hero cop because he's a corrupt cop in the pocket of Uncle Benny and his right hand reptile Henry Lee who runs a discriminatory criminal empire out of Chinatown: Chinese only. Chen's new partner is dim, upright Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg) who does a lot of good things and is slowly drawn into the web of corruption that's slowly suffocating Chen. With a murder rate higher than that for New York City over the past ten years, the movie's a mash of gangwars, mob hits, wire-wearing, FBI raiding, and serial pornographers shooting porn in dark basements. It feels like The French Connection redone for a 90s sensibility.

The plot may let the movie down, but the acting is better than anything to come out of the US in a long time. Screws tightened until blood oozes out from under his fingernails, Chow Yun-fat's Nick Chen is a man playing so many angles one of them's bound to catch up with him one day. He knows it, and so do the sharks. Cadaverously unctuous, Ric Young gives the evil performance of a decade. He drops laconic pearls of dialogue from his lips with such joie de morte that it seems a crime to make him deliver plot exposition, which curdles and blackens as it leaves his ivory throat.

Mark Wahlberg has come a long way, from beating up Asians to acting opposite them, and he brings a bracing blue-collar weariness to his straight man role. In a bizarre note, actor Kim Chan plays the malevolently gleeful Uncle Benny. Kim Chan also played the malevolently gleeful Uncle Benny in 1998's Lethal Weapon 4 with Jet Li. Perhaps he makes appearances at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs as Uncle Benny to supplement his income.

After the hysteria of the opening action scene, the movie settles into a slick series of setpieces, each one overstated enough to be real but kept low-key enough to seem true. There's a glass-shattering car chase that could be right off World's Scariest Police Chases and a shootout or two that have all the skewed charm of reality.

Chow powers the entire movie with his electric style, and it's a pity that he didn't get more attention for it. One day someone speaking English with a strong accent will win an Oscar, and on that day we'll all be embarrassed that we didn't nominate Chow Yun-fat when we had the chance.

by Grady Hendrix