“Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.”: a famous line from a classic film that wasn’t really about Chinatown at all. The cultural and economic tides have turned since then. The Asian Tigers have taught the West how to mass-produce high-tech consumer goods and Hong Kong has taught Hollywood how to make action films.
The creative minds behind The Corruptor are occidental, but the spirit is thoroughly oriental. Chinatown is not just a colourful backdrop or a metaphor; it’s an all-encompassing environment of uncertain footing, shifting allegiances, concealed motivations and ever-present threats. And we all thought it was just a place to get a good cheap meal.
The Corruptor is essentially a cop-buddy movie, a tried-and-true genre. Nick Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) is the senior officer in a special investigative unit responsible for New York’s Chinatown. He is a well-decorated tough-guy cop of the end-justifies-the-means variety. He reluctantly accepts into his unit the green Sinophile Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg). In spite of Nick’s doubts about the ability of a white cop to police effectively in Chinatown, he takes the young man under his protective wing and educates him in the unconventional techniques required.
Their main challenge is to put an end to a destructive gang war between a group of young Fukkienese up-and-comers and the established Tong gang. Benny Wong (Kim Chan) heads the Tongs but Wong's lieutenant, Henry Lee (Ric Young), pulls all the strings. Henry is presumably the corruptor of the title but it’s really hard to say. There’s a whole lot of corruption going on here. Nick draws Henry’s inevitable attention. Henry is a persuasive and beguiling man and Nick has his vulnerabilities.
As you’d expect in a movie of this sort, there’s an abundance of senseless violence -- do all bad guys WANT to be shot and killed? What is most disturbing is the number of innocent bystanders that are so casually wasted. If this is a trend in cinema, let’s hope it’s a short-lived one.
Thankfully, the violence is not used as a substitute for a story line. There are enough plot twists and turnarounds to make your head spin if you try to absorb them all. The only real fault here is that it straightens out too neatly at the end. If you cringe at the thought of suffering through yet another mindless action film, The Corruptor could prove to be a pleasant surprise.
