#the corruptor

[spockvarietyhour]

Chow Yun-fat in The Corruptor (1999)

[scarletwitchpanels]

Scarlet Witch kicking The Corruptor’s ass in Scarlet Witch #1

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Corruptor (Foley, 1999)

I understand this doesn't have the greatest reputation, but I think one thing it deserves credit for is that it treats Chow Yun-Fat like a real actor. I think if you compare this to other moves in that wave of Hong Kong stars trying to break into American cinema, you can see how they're often forced to tone down their essence or put into roles ill fitting for their kind of charisma. If we're going the buddy cop route, you have Jackie Chan at maybe 60% in Rush Hour and Jet Li being stone faced in Lethal Weapon 4, and even going back a few decades earlier. Here, Chow is allowed to retain his immense magnetism, allowed to exist in shades of grey, neither too heroic nor too unrepentantly corrupt, and allowed to essentially power the movie forward and have agency. I don't know how things went down behind the scenes, I'd like to think that James Foley, with his background in directing dramas, was able to grasp why this guy was such a great star and was able to do justice to those qualities. So if you're a Chow fan, as everyone should be, this is worth a look.

I'm even going to go to bat for Mark Walhberg. I see a lot of reviews bringing up the part where he puts on glasses to look smart, and... fair enough. And I don't think that he's able to sell his character's moral grappling, no matter how many brooding faces he puts on. (More evidence of what a great actor Chow is: he's able to almost singlehandedly sell these discussions and make Wahlberg sporadically look like a good actor. When the characters discuss their inevitable corruption in this environment, Chow sells not just his own internal conflict, but by extension Wahlberg's as well.) But I think Wahlberg's best roles (Boogie Nights, Three Kings, Pain and Gain) show him squirming as he's out of his element and unable to hide behind an alpha male facade, so I can appreciate the thinking behind his casting. I should also note that his performance here could have been a lot more offensive. Imagine this movie made a few years later, where he goes full bozo mode and spends the entire movie shouting and being a colossal prick. He could have been like a white Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 2. Think about how horrifying that movie would have been, and appreciate how his inoffensive performance here helps the movie dodge that bullet.

So you got a really good Chow performance, and a better than it could have been Wahlberg performance, and you got Foley directing this thing like an actual crime drama with some very nice cinematography giving it a nice and gritty mood. And you even have some not terrible action scenes, which are basically a watered down approximation of John Woo's style (lots of slow motion, arresting lighting choices, bodies being hurled, but cut faster and framed tighter than the real thing) and therefore automatically better than 90% of action scenes today. But I do think that's where the movie starts to fumble, as the action elements feel perfunctory and cause the story to be neglected. This obviously takes Year of the Dragon as a model with its cops vs triads plot and consideration of morally compromised tactics in such an environment, but this lacks that one's attention to detail (the triad scenes here feel brushed over and are mostly sold by Ric Young's performance as an ambitious underboss, while the other movie went to pains to sketch out the mechanics of the operation and the interpersonal dynamics between the leaders) and its willingness to be unlikable (without giving away too much, punches are definitely pulled in how the movie wants us to feel about these characters, whereas Mickey Rourke's character is allowed to be magnetic and ugly in ways that challenge the viewer almost to the end). And where that movie's action scenes played with a certain hysteria that felt like the movie and its hero kicking into high gear, the ones here feel like they're trotted out in the service of studio quotas. And even worse, when they're mixed with the moody aesthetic of the rest of the movie, the resulting chemical reaction produces something resembling the nu metal sheen that would be popular in the early 2000s.

So not great, but maybe worth a look for that Chow performance.

[experiment14-12]

Nick's Stealth

(feat., Hailey, Arco, Lucas, and Vera!)

Yeah, there's a new imposter in town.

The main antagonist of the Spirits of Sana series.

The Corruptor.

[afro-hispwriter]

ooop wendy got gagged

(But so did he… and silenced)

[bubblebaath]

the corrupted gifs kept freezing on this frame

[hzdtrees]

Land of No One

[h0riz0nstuff]

Moss

[spockvarietyhour]

I had that moment of uncertainty, this could just be the same office he has in Due South (it's not)

[scarletwitchpanels]

Scarlet Witch & The Corruptor in Scarlet Witch #1

[jrueships]

sometimes i'll think abt a Fandom and wish it were bigger, and sometimes i'll read something from a fandom.. and wish it were smaller

[btvsdemonssmashorpasstournament]

BTVS Smash or Pass Tournament Round 1 (Season 1)

[experiment14-12]

[MURDER] and the Corruptor Comparison

Yes, [MURDER] is goofy.

He may be a demon, but at least he can whip up a good meal.

The Corruptor only wants total anarchy.

That's the only thing on its mind.

In the video, it wanted to go find the 4 spirits: Arco, Hailey, Vera, and Lucas, and kill them off, one by one, so they don't keep thwarting its plans.

[mpatrycjaarthorizon]

Eyes of Corruptor

The Mania corruption mostly changed their eyes irreversibly.

Fortunately, there is no large body mutation thanks drugs, but instead their sanity is very low and Edom can be aggressive. Plus due to mutation they have a problem vocalizing words

[tare-otome]

Sights around Plainsong/No Man's Land 2/?

[remornia]

the real reason he allied with the druids of the flame is that he mixed up flight form and storks

Average Fyrakk Defender: He tried to burn Amirdrassil out of maternal instinct