Gay Today: Entertainment

By Corrine Hicks

Have you ever noticed how Hollywood intermittently celebrates the undersides of certain ethnic groups—usually those who, somewhere in the world, have been refusing to cooperate with the economic policies of the United States Government? Such movie-made types interact with U.S. citizens and quickly become the bad guys. Arabs have been handily used in this manner.

Chow Yun-Fat and Mark Wahlberg play detectives in The Corruptor

The Chinese have mostly long enjoyed, at their home-base in China anyway, a reputation among foreigners for having low crime rates.

But now, in the wake of The Corruptor, step aside please, you long- forgotten New York Mafia dons. Make way for Manhattan's newest mobsters: the Chinese; cruel, violent, and scrappy. The inscrutable (until clocked) Nick Chen (played by Chow Yun-Fat) and his initiate, Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg) put slants on these Chinese criminals as good as the current Republican slants on Chinese nuclear espionage.

Mark Wahlberg, happily, has gained a few needed pounds since he skinny-stripped through Boogie Nights. As Danny, he flits about at the side of his Chinese policeman-partner, and in deadly skirmishes he saves Nick Chen's life and vice versa.

This film, aside from its Chinese-ish-ness, is the story of two friends whose relationship gets sorely tested. Taking time to get to know each other, each man's fondness for the other grows. Danny goofs big-time during his first trial police runs, but his skills, nevertheless, develop rapidly under Nick's tutelage.

Previous Entertainment Articles from the GayToday Archive:
Boogie Nights

The X Files: Fight the Future

Killer Condom

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The Corruptor: Official Site
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Prostitution and gambling are not the only rackets at which Chinatown's mobsters excel. As lucrative, really, is their smuggling of aliens into our opportunity-filled Land of Approximately 2 Million Prisoners and who pay the crooks an outrageous $40,000 a head. Imported women, they discover, make good prostitutes.

What a gip: poor Chinese women, paying $40,000 a head only to be honored as hookers. Bring your weeping vase for when the film descends into a packed freighter's pit filled with Chinese border-hoppers going nowhere fast.

Danny, while he strides boy-manfully down Mott Street, learns what Chinatown's all about. He's not above accepting the services of a prostitute, bless him. It becomes easier, after all, to credit him as a good- boy cop if he's got some minor sex-hunger flaw, like someone else we know, a flaw that makes him human.

Danny's partner Nick, as Chinatown's top cop, isn't likely to be any help in New York City's currently raging debates involving the police department's sagging reputation. He's a gambler, and a collector of bribes and perks.

The bad guy in this film, Henry Lee (Ric Young) is appropriately scary, an easy talker with manipulative talents and a personality which, underneath, is as warm as a snake's. Because he perceives the two policemen as corrupt, his ability to finagle with them, placing them on his side, proves effective.

This film promises one of the finest auto chases—through Chinatown streets—on record. Mark Wahlberg's performance is delightfully serviceable if what one thrills to is a pugnacious imp. More impressive, perhaps, is Chow Yun-Fat's performance, intense and brooding.