Critic Reviews
56
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
13(57%)
mixed
8(35%)
negative
2(9%)
Showing 23 Critic Reviews
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All Reviews
Metascore
Metascore
100
The Corruptor' quickly turns into a good bad-cop drama of fascinating moral complexity.
80
I don't know if this movie could have been made with anyone but Chow Yun-Fat. As Chen, he finally is allowed to display the nervous energy and Eastern rhythms we associate with his Hong Kong work.
80
The Corruptor manages to make a meat-and-potatoes action flick into a cunning little meditation on personal loyalty and situational morality. [12 Mar 1999]
75
Beneath The Corruptor's explosive body count is a rock-solid, visually slick crime thriller set in the squalid netherworld of Manhattan's Chinatown.
75
From Juan Ruiz-Anchia's florid, eruptive photography to the pinpoint editing by Howard E. Smith that enhances it, everyone involved with The Corruptor understands that action is the bottom line - except Chow.
75
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."
75
At this point, "The Corruptor" looks as if it's going to be just a rehash of an early Dirty Harry movie, but it surprises by taking us inside Chinatown, where we discover just how sinister and elaborate the relationships between the police and the businessmen can be. [12 Mar 1999]
70
The movie may be a conventional story of police corruption, temptation and conflicting loyalties, but it never loses its smarts.
70
Chow Yun-fat, the epitome of swaggering suavity in John Woo's Hong Kong crime films, wears his role as a good-bad cop dapperly in this good-middling drama set in Manhattan's Chinatown.
70
It's to the filmmakers' credit that, as an actioner, The Corruptor is a character-driven movie, with several plot twists and turns involving the interactions among the gangs, cops, FBI and Internal Affairs.
