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As much as I am a fan of Chow Yun-Fat for his cool, charismatic performances under John Woo in classic action films such as The Killer and Hard Boiled, his career took a nose dive when he immigrated to the United States in the mid-'90s. He seemed only to accept roles concerned with glorifying the Asian stereotype, which hindered the progression of his skilful talents as an actor. And whereas I don't usually expect my action heroes to say much in their movies, from the evidence of this and his first American vehicle, The Replacement Killers, the language barrier was an obvious struggle for Yun-Fat, which significantly permitted much of his personality breaking through into his performances.

It's not purely down to his choice of role and limited English, however, as American filmmakers also seem clueless on how to use him. While The Replacement Killers did have some nice stylistic touches whenever Yun-Fat's character decided to exercise his itchy trigger finger, The Corruptor seems more concerned with overlong, uninteresting scenes involving random banter between the main characters about skin colour. Stylistically, aside from two or three nice scenes, the film plods along with no real clue of where it's going, and when the action does eventually come, a majority of the sequences aren't executed with enough urgency to satisfy the viewer. James Foley's direction is one of the key factors permitting Yun-Fat from really doing anything that that we know he's capable of. In other words, the film all seems very bland.

This is a buddy movie, which means the characters should ideally be the driving force of the story, but we are never completely absorbed by the performances of the actors onscreen that we start to root for them. Yun-Fat, as said, is disappointing, and Wahlberg as his partner-in-law tries so hard to under-act that he just comes across as boring (watching his dull performance here actually made me wish he would've incorporated some of that ridiculously over-hyped ego from his days as a rapper in the '90s -- and that's saying something).

This plot of the film is so simple, but another frustrating thing about The Corruptor is how overly complicated it is made to seem. Aided by an idealist young white cop named Danny Wallace (Wahlberg), Nick Chen (Yun-Fat) keeps tabs on Chinatown gang leaders Danny Lee (Ric Young) and Bobby Vu (Byron Mann), but soon finds himself being drawn into the activities of the ruthless killers and drug dealers on the streets. The familiar premise of a cop being unable to resist the corruption of the criminal underworld seemingly wasn't enough for the scriptwriters, though, as they do they try to confuse the viewer as best they can. The whole script is muddled with uninspiring one-dimensional subplots, including one involving Wallace's gambling-junkie father (Brian Cox), that it becomes pretty easy to lose track of what is going on. The whole thing's a mess.

The Corruptor does showcase some nice cinematography of Chinatown's streets, which is particularly noticeable during a well-choreographed car chase sequence at the mid-point of the film, but the best thing the filmmakers could've done was give Chow Yun-Fat some proper English lessons and let him do his thing. The Replacement Killers wasn't great, and this film is an even further cry from the seamless blends of sophisticated action and spiritual character that we admired in the Yun-Fat/Woo collaborations of the early '90s.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2010.