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Friendly fire >> James Foley unites Wahlberg and Yun-Fat in The Corruptor by MATTHEW HAYS
Director James Foley doesn't seem the least bit daunted by the task he's set up for himself with The Corruptor: match the legendary Yun-Fat with American pop-singer-turned-actor Mark Wahlberg and make a cop-buddy-action movie. The film would naturally evoke comparisons with Yun-Fat's other Hong Kong stuff. But as Foley makes clear, the spectre of the Hong Kong phenom didn't even enter his mind: "Probably because I'm too ignorant to be aware of it. I never even saw The Replacement Killers. I'm not too proud of this, but I've never even seen a Hong Kong movie from beginning to end." Foley, the director behind such films as At Close Range and Glengarry Glen Ross, concedes that Hong Kong fever may have found its way into The Corruptor, seeing as the screenwriter wrote the film with Yun-Fat in mind. "But Yun-Fat and I agreed on one thing," says Foley. "We wanted to make a drama, not a Hollywood rip-off of a Hong Kong action movie." The story is familiar enough on either side of the ocean: two cop buddies try to fight corruption without becoming corrupt themselves. What might tweak the interest of Yun-Fat fans are the endless, highly choreographed shootouts between Wahlberg, Yun-Fat and everyone else in the movie. "There was much more violence," reports Foley. "But the American Ratings Board thought there was too much for NC-17, so they cut it out. That's something that I feel really unhappy about. I'm not sure people will notice, because it's not really that different. But I feel it's a sort of economic censorship." Foley says working with Yun-Fat was dream-like. "He's got a sort of surreal sixth sense about how to connect with the audience. I've never experienced it in quite the same way. He has a great sense of detail and an understanding of what an audience will enjoy." Some have read homosexual overtones into the relationships of Hong Kong onscreen buddies, and there certainly appears to be something amiss between Wahlberg and Yun-Fat, two cops who spend a lot of time obsessing over each other. Foley says it's unintentional, but can certainly understand the interpretation. "The first time that struck me was when an exec at New Line said during the script stage, 'This really is a love story between the two guys.' The essential dynamic is between the two of them, and it does rely on a mutual sense of affection, respect, a bonding and then a betrayal. My approach to those scenes is to not put a name to it. If they lead to that kind of reading, then all the better." The Corruptor opens Friday, March 12
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It has been argued that, with the possibility of one or two exceptions, North American films attempting to emulate or take on the style of Hong Kong action movies have failed miserably. Think last year's The Replacement Killers, in which an apparently mismatched Mira Sorvino and Chow Yun-Fat blasted their way through a rather lifeless vehicle.