The Corruptor

***

Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Mark Wahlberg

Director: James Foley

Rating: R18

Reviewer: Russell Baillie

This is the second Stateside excursion for Hong Kong star Chow Yun-Fat after the dismal Replacement Killers and, as such, it's not bad.

Maybe that's because despite its New York setting it does a fine impersonation of the HK films in which he made his name with blazing guns, ponderings of loyalty and honour, and rampant male bonding.

"Fats" is Nick Chen, the leader of an NYPD Asian gang unit trying to keep a lid on Chinatown, which two factions - henna-haired new boys the Fukinese Dragons, and the inscrutable old school Tong Triad - are turning into a battleground of mounting body count

He's given some unwanted assistance in the form of Danny Wallace (Wahlberg), the first white cop assigned to his unit and a Sinophile to boot. And just as you think this is going to be fairly ordinary rookie-veteran, odd-buddy, father-son, police procedural, The Corruptor starts turning out rather more complicated.

Sure, there's wall-to-wall gunfights and one highly impressive car chase, but there's an unexpected depth of plot and character. This may be The Corruptor's slight undoing because the web it spins - which takes in subplots involving Wallace's relationship with his ex-flatfoot Dad, Chen's dodgy dealings with the Chinatown underworld, the gangs' own political upheavals, and the curiosity of the FBI - makes for quite a lot to absorb between the frequent hails of bullets.

It doesn't help that Fats' English isn't the best yet, but he does play Chen with an eccentric Al Pacino-ish edge, his set of tics and mannerisms giving this a peculiar sense of humour.

Wahlberg keeps up his end of the double act well enough (occasionally adopting spectacles to offset his pectorals), and the film strives to avoid the implicit cliches of their pairing.

The violence might be necessarily stylised but director Foley gives much of this a stark and grainy look that alludes to a deeper, darker underworld than we might see on NYPD Blue - even if he is just a bit fond of aerial shots from above Manhattan.

The Corruptor has its flaws of pacing, clarity and too many noodles in its pot. But it makes something rather absorbing and exciting from its parts, especially the ones stamped "Made in Hong Kong."