Irresistible Yun-Fat Finally Gets Chance to Shine in ‘Corruptor’

Forget “The Replacement Killers.” Pretend it never happened. If America really wants to know what made Chow Yun-Fat a superstar of Chinese cinema, “The Corruptor” is the place to start.

As Lt. Nick Chen, the lethally effective, if ethically challenged, head of the NYPD’s Asian Gang Unit, Yun-Fat holds your attention span as if it were a kitten he likes to tease. He may be the only action star in the world who still knows how to make walking into a room seem like an existential act. His broad face is a road map of hard-won wisdom and sardonic glee. Even with all the gunplay and explosions as distractions, you miss Yun-Fat whenever he’s not on screen.

Giving a badge to Yun-Fat’s internationally renowned bad/good guy persona is a smart move on somebody’s part. Pairing him with Mark Wahlberg, as Chen’s laconic, idealistic partner Danny Wallace, likewise turns out better than one might have expected. Between these two enigmas, “The Corruptor” manages to make a meat-and-potatoes action flick into a cunning little meditation on personal loyalty and situational morality.

Chen and his fellow Asian strike force commandos find it peculiar, to say the least, that a callow-looking white guy like Wallace is assigned to their basement office, just as Chinatown is literally exploding in a turf war between the ruling Triads and a brutal, well-armed gang of young insurgents called the Fukinese Dragons.

To keep the lid on, Chen has for years maintained a Faustian bargain with the Triads, with whom he has made shady deals in exchange for high-profile busts. Chen tries to shield Wallace from such greasy dealings. But, with the heat on, Henry Lee (Ric Young), the sybaritic serpent who controls the Triads, pulls Wallace in for some of the action. Wallace finds this process dicey to say the least, but the spoils come in handy, especially with an ex-cop dad (Brian Cox), addicted to booze and gambling, who’s in deep trouble with loan sharks.

This might have been a routine police story, except that stories this deep and dark aren’t told as routinely as they once were. Car chases are all that audiences today seem to want from these movies, and “The Corruptor” delivers an extravagantly vicious example.

But director James Foley, who has shown a tightly wound affinity for such tales of mundane corruption as “After Dark, My Sweet” (1990) and “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992), keeps the action firmly anchored to the story. And the story does get complicated, selling out your own expectations just as the characters keep selling each other out.

It’s hardly the pinnacle of such detective thrillers, but compared with, say, the last couple of “Lethal Weapons,” it’s darned close to the platinum standard.

In fact, with all due respect to Mel Gibson in his Martin Riggs mode, Yun-Fat’s Nick Chen comes across as the kind of guy Riggs imagines himself to be on his best days, but falls a few meters short. It’s taken some time for the news to get here, but with “The Corruptor,” Hollywood seems to have finally figured out what other continents already knew: Yun-Fat is a movie star of the first magnitude.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong violence, language and sexuality. Times guidelines: may be OK for midteens, but too violent for younger children.

‘The Corruptor’

Chow Yun-Fat: Nick Chen

Mark Wahlberg: Danny Wallace

Ric Young: Henry Lee

Paul Ben-Victor: Schabacker

Jon Kit Lee: Jack

Andrew Pang: Willy Ung

Elizabeth Lindsey: Louise Deng

Brian Cox: Sean Wallace

An Illusion Entertainment Group production, released by New Line Cinema. Director James Foley. Producer Dan Halsted. Executive producers Oliver Stone, Terence Chang, Bill Carraro, Jay Stern. Screenplay Robert Pucci. Cinematographer Juan Ruiz-Anchia. Editor Howard E. Smith. Music Carter Burwell. Production designer David Brisbin. Costumes Doug Hall. Co-executive producers Jonathan Krauss, Brian Witten. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

In general release.