New York, Chinatown; the present.
A gang war between the established Tong run by Uncle Bobby Woo, and the upstart Fukiyama gang is heating up, and cop Chow Yun Fat is doing his best to keep the lid on the cooker. All he needs is rookie cop Mark Wahlberg stirring up trouble. The thing is Fat as been working for the Tongs for a long time now, but he wants to keep Wahlberg clean. But is Walhberg as innocent as he seems?

The Corruptor may sound like run of the mill Buddy Cop fare, but Fat and Wahlberg riff well off each other, and the level of distrust between their characters and cultures runs deep. And with its super glossy production and some incredible high-adrenaline action scenes, The Corruptor also manages to say a little bit about the nature of corruption, and poses a couple of questions about the western fascination for the Orient. When we see brief shots of New York, it is a little startling to be reminded that this is America. The Chinatown of The Corruptor is a strange bubble of exoticism; much more John Woo than Roman Polanski. But don't worry too much about the serious stuff, this film is great fun.

David Mamet is one of Hollywood's greatest undervalued assets. He has penned instant classics such as The Untouchables, Glengarry Glen Ross and Wag the Dog with The Spanish Prisoner now added to the list. He even picks up the cone-shouty-thing, dons the jodhpurs and directs for the fifth time!

I won't give away too much of the intricate plot, as it is best to blunder through it as the protagonists do. The movie concerns Joe Ross as a corporate boffin who has invented a process whereby he can earn his company an enormous amount of money. After a somewhat dream-like business junket to the Caribbean, where he introduces his process to the main investors, what follows is a very well-written paranoid thriller that uses at its heart a murderous greed that seems to permeate the whole movie.

The acting is wonderfully understated with Campbell Scott playing the wooden and sometimes deadpan Joe Ross. Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon is also delightfully believable as we slowly fall for her as the very up-front love interest. Steve Martin shows what a great dramatic actor he can be as the enigmatic Jimmy Dell, not letting us smile at him during the whole film. A wonderful movie.