With the aid from a New York City policeman (Mark Wahlberg), a top immigrant cop (Chow Yun-Fat) tries to stop drug-trafficking and corruption by immigrant Chinese Triads, but things get complicated when the Triads try to bribe the policeman.

Roger Ebert wrote, "Director James Foley is obviously not right for this material. It's a shame, actually, that he's even working in the genre, since his gift is with the intense study of human behavior." High praise for Foley, who made the excellent "Glengarry Glen Ross", but has also gone on to work in the "Fifty Shades" franchise. Maybe Ebert was too kind.

For some reason, this film seems like it had the script of an exploitation film but the budget of a major feature. This ends up with sleazy situations and bad dialogue that do not belong in anything this major. One wonders how this was not a major stumbling block for Wahlberg, though it may not be his only misfire.

Another action gay movie Chow starred in. And this time the gayness is more "subtle" than his previous action movies made in Hong Kong. The plot is just so so. Not very impressive. What stands out is the tone of this movie. Everybody talks and acts in a violent way. Kind of cool. The culture thing is perfect. They act like both Chinese and Americans, without stupid stereotyping.

Poor Chow Yun-Fat: he pays his dues in HK cinema, rising to Asian superstar, and gets a crack at Hollywood fame only to share the limelight with an ex-boy-band singer/underwear model in a mediocre crime drama.

The Corrupter, directed by James Foley, opens promisingly enough with a shootout in a shop that could have been straight out of a John Woo movie, but soon settles into tedious mode with the introduction of Mark Wahlberg, who exudes all the personality of a dim sum dumpling. Wahlberg plays cop Danny Wallace, assigned to the Asian Gang Unit in New York, working alongside Lt. Chen (Yun-Fat), who is in the pocket of the Tong triads. It eventually turns out that Wallace is internal affairs, his job to collect the dirt on Chen, but predictably, he comes to realise that although Chen isn't playing by the rules, he isn't such a bad cop after all. Yawn.

There's quite a lot of shooting, with satisfyingly bloody squib-work, and a half-decent car chase scene midway that results in the deaths of numerous innocent bystanders, but this is heavily outweighed by the forgettable drama, which isn't helped by some dreary guff about Wallace's strained relationship with his father (played by Brian Cox). It wouldn't be long before Chow Yun Fat returned to his homeland to make films, and judging by The Corrupter, who could blame him?