The Corruptor (1999)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio & Animation Dolby Digital Trailer-Canyon Scene Selection Anim & Audio Audio Commentary-James Foley (Director) Featurette-The Research: Beneath The Streets Featurette-The Cast: East Meets West Featurette-The Production: Action With Character Featurette-The Director: The Close-Up Featurette-The Car Chase: The Unedited, Unrated Version Featurette-The Marketing: Building The Trailer Featurette-The Stills Gallery: Prod Design Studies/Stillls Theatrical Trailer-1:40 Biographies-Cast & Crew-7 Music Video-Take It Off-UGK
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	105:35
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (80:12)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	James Foley
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Chow Yun-Fat Mark Wahlberg Ric Young Paul Ben-Victor Byron Mann Brian Cox
Case	C-Button-Version 1
RPI	$34.95	Music	Carter Burwell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Chow is Nick Chen, something of a super-cop with the NYPD Asian Gang Unit , operating in New York's Chinatown. In something of a turnaround on the usual, his new partner is a young white cop, Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg). Going underground into the criminal element, we learn that Chen has a slightly unorthodox way of keeping the peace between the established organised crime element of the district, and the pretenders to the throne, the Fukinese Dragons, who are struggling for control of the streets. Chen is aligned with the old guard, in the form of Uncle Benny (Kim Chan) and Henry Lee (Ric Young). And by aligned I mean on the payroll, and the challenge falls to Chen to keep Wallace out of the way and out of trouble, as the rookie cop may as well be policing the streets of another planet now that he has landed in Chinatown.

    Some interesting twists and turns then befall our heroes, and to elaborate any further on these would spoil one of the few pleasures associated with The Corruptor. Suffice it to say, the playing field turns into a bit of a moral quagmire, with each of the characters wrestling with their own inner demons, whilst attempting to wrangle with those presented to them on the streets and in the underground of New York.

    Mark Wahlberg (Three Kings) unfortunately just isn't an action hero, and although he manages to generate some chemistry with Chow (to the extent that a montage charting the progression of their relationship resembled the style of a romantic comedy), he remains fairly bland and uninteresting, and as with Chow, the unnecessarily complex and muddy script doesn't allow the talent that we know he has to emerge.

    Of the remaining actors, there's only really anything good to say about Ric Young (Seven Years In Tibet). As the fiendishly evil Henry Lee (the corruptor referred to in the title) he manages to hit the right notes between evil and cunning without going over the top. Elizabeth Lindsay's name appears reasonably prominently in the credits, however I had to think hard about who she played. There is a hint of a relationship with Chen, however, in keeping with the poor character development generally in display, some harsh editing appears to have left her only lurking around the background in a few shots. Byron Mann (Streetfighter) makes a decent fist of his cliched hatchet man character, but Jonkit Lee as Jack does his best to look only semi-conscious throughout the entire feature.

    Is it possible for almost all of the movie to take place in the late afternoon? The majority of the lighting features slanted light through venetian blinds, and although I'm sure that director James Foley (Gkengarry Glenn Ross) thought that this was most stylized, I just found it annoying, as it would distract me from the onscreen action. This was a symptom of much of the movie: style for style's sake, at the expense of character development and dialogue. Like MarkWahlberg, Foley just isn't suited to this type of movie, and his talent for the study of human behaviour doesn't need violence, blood and gore (of which there are bucketloads) to get in its way. Despite some fairly well-executed action sequences, including a fairly exciting car chase sequence, I felt that much of the violence bordered on the gratuitous, and aspects such as the number of "innocent bystanders" catching bullets during police operations did little to assist my suspension of disbelief.

    After the equally half-baked The Replacement Killers, Chow Yun-Fat has to wait a little longer before he can join Jackie Chan as a Hong Kong action star who has successfully made the transition to Hollywood. For me, The Corruptor, despite its potential as an interesting twist on the cop-buddy formula, is a below-average go at the genre, and with the body of movies of this type released over the last twenty years, even average wouldn't have been good enough.

Video

    The first thing that struck me about this transfer is that it is razor sharp, and this is achieved without the merest hint of excessive edge enhancement. Detail is abundant, even in some of the chaotic street scenes where there seems to be action in all parts of the frame. Shadow detail is very good, without being excellent, and the black level is spot on - deep and lush. Low-level noise is not a concern whatsoever.

    In the style of many gritty "street" movies of recent times, the colour palette is somewhat muted, however there are regular splashes of Chinatown colour which are rendered vibrantly and faithfully, from the neon signs littering the streetscape, to the inevitable Chinese dragons.

   MPEG artefacts were absent, and film-to-video artefacts quite rare, with the main examples of aliasing occuring in a scene around the 58:00 mark containing some horizontally-patterned office windows and a "flashy" suit, and then between 64:26 and 64:42, at 72:32 and again at 79:42, all on venetian blinds. Film artefacts are not totally absent, but you have to look very hard to spot the occasional black fleck as it briefly appears.

    This DVD is RSDL formatted, with the layer change coming at 80:12. There was only a very brief pause on my player, and it was barely noticeable as it was well hidden in a mid-scene transition.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    I listened to the default Dolby Digital 5.1 track, as well as the commentary track in their entirety, and I had an aural peek at the Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded track.

    The dialogue was reasonably easy to understand, with the exception of some lines from Chow Yun-Fat. This was an issue relating to his accent rather than any flaw of the transfer. Audio sync was not a concern whatsoever.

    The Carter Burwell (Three Kings) score was as to be expected tinged with the usual Chinese-type bamboo flute sounds over a more traditional action score, and although a little cliched, suited the on-screen action well. In the main, though, music was presented in the way of in-movie hip-hop, a style favoured by Hollywood/Hong Kong crossover movies of recent times.

    An aggressive use of the surrounds drags the viewer into the gritty urban world in which this movie is set. From the opening minute, there is something happening, either in the way of ambient effects (such as the police station scenes) to out-and-out action-induced directional effects, such as during the many gunfights, and in the car chase scene.

    The subwoofer also boomed into action from the opening scenes, and was called upon regularly as there was no end to the gunshots, crashes and general action sequences. It was also called upon to support the in-movie doof music with regularity.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Audio Commentary - James Foley (Director)

Making of From the (Under)Ground Up (43:48)

Theatrical Trailer (1:40)

Cast & Crew

Music Video - Take It Off by UGK (4:32)

Dolby Digital Canyon Trailer

• Isolated score with composer's commentary
• Still gallery
• DVD-ROM features

• Dolby Digital 2.0 Dolby Surround Encoded soundtrack.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall