The Corruptor

The Corruptor' quickly turns into a good bad-cop drama of fascinating moral complexity.

It aspires to greater moral ambiguity than the average crime thriller, and if it doesn't entirely succeed it nevertheless avoids the lazy moral bankruptcy of movies like "Lethal Weapon 4."

If you're in the mood for loud, fast-moving action trash, The Corruptor is waiting to meet you in a dark alley.

The Corruptor is visually lively and filled with gratuitous destruction. [12 Mar 1999]

Foley is an actors' directors stuck here with a genre piece, and it shows: The action (save a killer car chase) is clumsily staged. Still, the story about corrupt police in New York's Chinatown has occasional moments of depth. [12 Mar 1999]

What you get in this cop drama is NYPD Blue lite. That's not bad. In fact, it's compulsively watchable. But there are no leaps, just fits and starts.

That in such a miserable film I could still care whether his character lived or died is, perhaps, the greatest proof that Chow Yun Fat's a movie star.