| FILM
This was Chow Yun-Fat's second American movie and luckily they
are getting better. His first film was The Replacement Killers
and although Chow Yun-Fat had some interesting scenes, overall
it was such a Hong Kong rip off it was painful at times. The
Corruptor and The Replacement Killers give you an idea of his
talent, but unless you have seen him in either John Woo's The
Killer or Hard Boiled you will not get a full appreciation.
The man has got to be the coolest actor on film since Sean Connery
in the original Bond films. One of the great group events is
to see Hard Boiled in a packed theater. The energy is just amazing.
The
Corruptor had me worried at the beginning because the opening
scene plays again like a Hong Kong rip off. What surprised me
was that in the commentary James Foley says that he never sat
through a full Hong Kong film. You wouldn't know it by the opening
scene. The next scene is straight from a John Woo film so I
started to worry that we were not going to progress any further
than The Replacement Killers. Thankfully the film gets much
better after the two scenes. The general set up is like any
other cop/buddy film in which the two leads start off butting
heads over everything until a mutual respect is developed. Luckily,
the cliches are not over done and by the end of the movie I
fully bought the relationship between Mark Wahlberg and Chow
Yun-Fat.
I
do not want to go into the plot too much, but it does have some
interesting twists and turns and Yun-Fat does get to show off
both his improved English and his acting skills. Mark Wahlberg
may not be the greatest actor, but when he is cast correctly
it always seems to work. (ie. Boogie Nights, Three Kings and
this film)
VIDEO
The video on this disc is absolutely beautiful. All the bright,
conflicting and loud colors of Chinatown are perfectly captured
in both the cinematography of the film and transfer to this
disc. All the night scenes have outstanding shadow detail, which
is really one of the hardest things to capture. In a couple
of the bar scenes there is bright yellow background that looks
unbelievably good. New Line continues to get it right.
AUDIO
For this DVD we get a new 5.1 Dolby Digital remix. Sound is
excellent. Good low bass and active surrounds, which often times
are missing from remixes.
EXTRAS
As with most of New Line's Platinum Series discs, the extras
are plentiful. In fact the extras made me enjoy the movie even
more. Foley's commentary is very insightful and he point out
a lot of details you may miss the first time through the film.
The documentary has lots of good interviews and most significantly,
it has the uncut version of the pivotal car chase that had to
be cut to get an R rating. Carter Burwell's excellent score
is isolated which is another huge plus. Another thumbs up goes
to New Line for actually putting chapter stops on both the documentary
and the isolated score. We also get the typical cast and crew
info along with the theatrical trailer.
SUMMARY
New Line has been creating some of the best DVD's from the beginning
and this is no exception. I am especially impressed because
this film did not do that great at the theater. The quality
of this disc will only bring in more fans. Check it out.
|
