`THE CORRUPTOR' HAS ITS MOMENTS, IN BETWEEN CLICHES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Remarkably well-crafted for a fundamentally unremarkable police thriller, ``The Corruptor's'' pleasures are modest but consistent. Set in Manhattan's Chinatown, it's a Ken Starr Era tale of professional compromise, personal betrayal and secret taping among New York's not-so-finest and competing underworld tongs.

There's a spectacularly destructive car chase, lots of posturing by top Hong Kong tender/tough guy Chow Yun-Fat and some streetwise soul-searching from Mark Wahlberg. Cop or crook, everyone double-, triple- and octuple-crosses everybody else, and more people are shot up in under two hours than have probably been killed in New York since Mayor Giuliani took over.

Generic and junky as all this sounds, director James Foley (``After Dark, My Sweet,'' ``Glengarry Glen Ross''), instills more humor, suspense and moral intelligence into the piece than shoot-'em-ups usually bother with these days.

Racial issues are handled with an interesting combination of in-your-face bluntness (when Wahlberg's detective Danny Wallace joins the all-Asian unit run by Chow's Nick Chen, his new colleagues bust his chops about only being there to meet Chinese girls) and drooling hypocrisy (every opportunity to undress a young Asian woman is lovingly exploited).

Similarly, some stereotypical exoticness is ascribed to a tong mobster or two. For the most part, though, the film manages to portray Chinese-American gang life persuasively, with a convincing mix of cultural specificity and all-American ruthlessness.

Wahlberg gives another psychologically solid, unfussy performance, while Chow projects Eastwoodian formidability despite his penchant for pulling goofy faces. Together, they make one of the more engaging mismatched cop teams we've seen lately. And Foley places them in a palpably restricting world of, yes, endemic corruption, shot through with traps both ethical and physical.

It's not ``Chinatown,'' Jake. But through efficient storytelling, a few distinctive ideas and superior craftsmanship, ``The Corruptor'' makes its case.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Corruptor'' (R; violence, nudity, language).

The stars: Chow Yun-Fat, Mark Wahlberg, Ric Young, Byron Mann, Brian Cox.

Behind the scenes: Directed by James Foley. Written by Robert Pucci. Produced by Dan Halsted. Released by New Line Cinema.

Running time: One hour, 51 minutes.

Playing: Citywide

Our rating: Three stars.