Later this year, Toy Robot Video (a new sub-label of Arrow Video) will be releasing a 4K Ultra HD for for The Corruptor, a 1999 action/thriller directed by James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross, At Close Range).
The Corruptor stars Hong Kong screen legend Chow Yun-fat (Project Gutenberg, The Killer), Mark Wahlberg (The Departed, Mile 22, The Big Hit), Ric Young (Kiss of the Dragon), Jon Kit Lee (Romeo Must Die), Brian Cox (Braveheart) and Byron Mann (Double Edge, The Man with the Iron Fists).
Nick Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) is not your average New York cop. Working in Chinatown has its multifarious cultural nuances and its fair share of ubiquitous enticement, both of which are reflected in detective Chen’s weary face. He had to get into bed with the highest echleons of the Chinese Mafia as a way of augmenting his own career, while maintaining a semblance of control over the dime-a-dozen hoods who proliferate on this turf. To make matters worse, he now has to break in rookie detective Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg), who has asked to be assigned to the Chinatown division. And all of this under the suspicious eye of Internal Affairs.
Details and features are still pending.
🔥 Footnote: This underrated thriller is exactly how we like it: gritty. Think of it as a buddy cop action flick crossed with Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon. Its standout car chase spares no one, whether they’re criminals or innocent bystanders. If you’re expecting Hong Kong style action, you might be disappointed. Bonus: If you’re a Third Eye Blind fan, your ears will be happy in a few spots
This title will be available at The Goodie Emporium, a U.S.-based online store that currently has many Import Shaw Brothers/Golden Harvest/martial arts DVD/Blu-ray movies in-stock – with New titles being added regularly!
Watch the film’s classic Trailer below:
Hollywood really had no idea what to do with CYF, did they? He never got to display the famous charisma and acting ability that propelled him to white-hot stardom in Asia, never got to show off his comedic or romantic chops, or sink his teeth into a suitably dramatic role.
It was just Temu John Woo (The Replacement Killers), an ambitious but inert drama (Anna and the King), and this forgotten sleazefest that trafficked in recycled tropes from Year of the Dragon.
And to think, these were Oscar-worthy efforts compared to what came after…Bulletproof Monk, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and of course, Dragonball Evolution. His career has never really recovered, but at least he’s carved out a legend through his 80s and 90s films that will stand the test of time, and has been able to coast on that legend in a bunch of throwaway Chinese flicks since.
The Corruptor was his best Hollywood film and didn’t need to take from Year of the Dragon. It was very much in line with a Don Siegel crime film, and I wish that Chow Yun Fat did more of these in the US. He could have gone on to do films similar to Running Scared or 21 Bridges.
I don’t mind upgrading my cardboard DVD.
“I don’t mind upgrading my cardboard DVD.” lol
I fucking HATED those snapper cases. They were ugly and they stuck out on your shelf, which really irked me. I think Warner Bros. was the biggest culprit.
You’re not wrong. =)
I think in old interviews around that era Chow claimed that he needed to go Hollywood because he couldn’t make the movies he wanted to make in HK anyore. at the time I thought he meant the handover in 1997. With hindsight and the help of Frank Djeng comentaries and box office data, he was actually referring to the bottom falling out the heroic bloodshed genre. While Full contact and hard Boiled are stone called classics, they didnt even make back the production budget in HK and were box office flops.
hollywood didnt want New Year comedy Chow Yun Fat even those were the big earners so we got Temu Chow as you put it for The Replacement Killers. That movie in addition to be generally crap also added extra “oriental” bullshit. How to explain this. Go to a restaurant in Chinatown in London and theres qipaos and dragons and lanterns everywhere. Go to a restaurant in China, its just looks like how you would expect a restaurant to look.
And don’t get me started on The Corruptor. Marky Mark , the worst former boyband member who hates Asians and actually acts on his hatred, is the hero in a story of predomininantly evil Asians. This is Ben Shapiro levels of wish fulfilment.
Anyways totally agree, nothing Chow did post 1994 was anything remotely as good as his peak era except Crouching Tiger and Project Gutenberg.
Don’t watch Year of the Dragon. =)
All great points! Crouching Tiger was a stone-cold classic that’s weirdly forgotten today.
I seem to recall that Ang Lee’s top casting choices were Leon Lai in CYF’s role, and Shu Qi in Zhang Ziyi’s role, which would have made it a lot weirder, since they dated in real life (also, Leon Lai isn’t a patch on CYF’s charisma). When that didn’t work out, he tried to get Jet Li, who turned it down to take care of his pregnant wife, and then we got CYF.
Re: the Orientalism – even beyond the offensiveness to anyone of Asian descent, and the lack of relation to the real world, it came off in The Corruptor as mean-spirited and hateful. By contrast, Rush Hour trafficked in every Orientalist stereotype possible, from the humor, to the iconography, to the soundtrack, but it was legitimately hilarious (offensive, but hilarious). I don’t blame anyone for being offended by Rush Hour, but it was undeniably side-splittingly funny in 1998 (and today).
Any insensitivity towards Asian characters in The Corruptor was no different from how the likes of Deep Cover or King of New York would show character’s insensitivities to black, Hispanic, or Jewish people.
These 3 films don’t glorify racism or gloss over the seriousness of it. They simply portrayed how insensitive and worse people can be towards other races.
As far as Rush Hour goes, it’s soft core as far as being vulgar and offensive goes, and could have been a lot worse in that regard.
I think the insensistivity would be casting Asian hate crime perpertratror Marky Mark in the role of the good guy white cop saviour role trying to keep the peace in Chinatown.
This is as dumb as casting Mel Gibson as Schindler in Schindlers List or Jonathan Majors in a breezy romcom. I can’t think of any more examples but you get what I mean.
Except the character he played wasn’t a savior. He was a flawed cop trying to do something good.
Obviously, he was wrong to assault those people back then, and he was lucky that he only served 45 days in prison. Nothing will change what he’s done, and he has to live with it.
It’s a novel idea that people who committed violent crimes in the past can be reformed and redeemed, but I don’t know what else can be done beyond that.
The worst part is Marky mark isn’t even a good actor. You can remove his whole filmography and cinephiles wouldn’t be missing out on much except Boogie Nights. Even then PT Anderson could have got any number of actors to be the lead and it would have been equally as good.
Going off topic but another scumbag that never paid for their crime, at the top of the list has to be Roman Polanski. Rosemarys Baby and Chinatown are stone cold classics but that doesnt cancel the anal rape he did on a 13 year old. But its good to know that the usuallymorally righteous French are ok with underage rape. I bet in film school students learn good auteur more than cancels out dirty fucking pedo
I recently bought the 4k bluray of Crouching Tiger. The movie absolutely holds up. Ang Lee and his screenwriting team did a brillaint job of honing in a feew narrative threads which makes the movie really accesible for anyone not just people who know their wuxia novels and tropes. Its also absolutely beautiful movie. Compare that to 2026’s Blade of the Guardians and its no contest visually. Ang Lee wanted to make a movie as timeless as A Touch Of Zen and he absolutely succeeded. Yes Chinese speaking audiences can complain about the dodgy Mandarin accents but everyone else using that as an excuse to dislike the movie is riduclous.
Another film that falls into the tired trope of portraying Asians as villains while positioning white characters as the heroes. It’s no surprise this one has largely faded from the conversation. Marky Mark is a racist Trumper.
Easy now. You’re gonna offend some of the bigots who hang out on a site that covers Asian films.
The movie starred Chow Yun-Fat and Wahlberg was his protege. This was not a movie where only white people are the “heroes.” And while I’m not a fan of Wahlberg, I don’t know anything about him being Maga.
I think the black people Marky Mark threw rocks at and the Vietnamese guy that was called a Vietamese peice of shit who got beat with a stick and then lost an eye would probably disagree. yes you could argue these weren’t racially motivated but thats like saying Trump didn’t know the girls were underage.
Wahlberg being dogshit has nothing to do with his politics. Plenty of liberals are also guilty of assault against innocent people. I know those incidents were many years ago and it’s easy to say that he’s changed, but it doesn’t look good for him when he tries to get these crimes erased from his records and pretend they never happened.
I’m not accusing Marky Mark of being a right wing facist (I don’t know his politics), I don’t care if hes found god or is repentant , I’m just calling him out for being a racist peice of shit who seems to be have gone under the radar when others have done much less and got cancelled for it.
Nancy, you’re not wrong, and that critique likely applies to basically every Hollywood movie featuring Asians. They will always be reductive at best, offensive at worst. If we want nuance, look to the East and their cinema.
With regards to this website, it’s largely run and read by Westerners who have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of Asian films that positively portray Asian men, women, culture, and history, and who love and celebrate those portrayals.
A good film and fingers crossed Toy Robot also give us Replacement Killers too
The Replacement Killers may have been “John Woo Jr,” but it was a nice intro to people who’ve never seen Chow Yun-Fat, and it allowed Antoine Fuqua to get his feet wet and become a better director later on.
I really don’t feel like getting into such a debate… but I remember this article about the marky mark victim.. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/11/mark-wahlberg-1988-assault-victim-pardon
& https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-2868589/Mark-Wahlberg-s-blinding-race-attack-victim-Johnny-Trinh-backs-bid-pardon-saying-course-forgive-didn-t-blind-Communist-Vietnamese-did-that.html
I think that says more about the victim’s generous spirit than it does about Wahlberg.
That said, show business is filled with scummy people. At a certain point, it’s a personal decision as to whether or not that affects our enjoyment of a film. Can you still listen to R Kelly or Michael Jackson? Watch House of Cards with Kevin Spacey? A lot of HK fans turned on Jackie Chan after the Dragon Seed affair baby scandal. Ekin Cheng lost his career momentum when he left his older, faithful TVB girlfriend (Maggie Siu) for the hot younger starlet (Gigi Leung). Chin Siu Ho gave great performances in Fist of Legend and Tai Chi Master, even though IRL he was a creep who got canceled for taking upskirt photos. Etc.
We don’t need to justify, excuse, or minimize what Wahlberg did. We can choose whether or not we’ll allow it to inform our decision whether or not to consume his work.