October 3rd sees the Trinity Cine Asia release in the UK of Hong Kong action thriller The Shadow’s Edge, a startlingly good thrill ride from start to finish and the best film Jackie Chan has starred in since Martin Campbell’s The Foreigner back in 2017. If anyone has ever wondered what films like Heat or The Departed would have been like if they’d contained a heavy dose of superbly choreographed martial arts action, then wonder no more… The Shadow’s Edge is exactly that, and much more.
The movie is set in present day Macau, with Chan playing a retired surveillance expert enlisted to bring an end to the activities of an elite team of robbers led by a mysterious criminal known as the Shadow (a splendid Tony Leung Ka-fai). It opens with a brilliantly staged heist sequence in a heavily guarded bank vault, which shows us how efficiently skillful and deadly this team is, especially when it comes to the modern worlds of cryptocurrency and AI in which they ply their trade. Chan is aided by a young rookie policewoman (Zhang Zifeng), and the duo encounter all kinds of mayhem and personal trauma as they battle to bring the villains to brutal justice.
The selling point of this film is the quality of the plentiful, spectacular action scenes, which take up the bulk of the 141-minute running time. Chan excels himself in the leading role, and the film benefits immensely from a complete absence of the often gurning physical comedy that he’s nowadays too often associated with. The lengthy and gruelling fight sequences are shot in such a way that every move is clear to the eye throughout – Paul Greengrass, eat your heart out – and director Larry Yang is a rare talent who really puts his 70-year-old star through it as he punches and kicks his way through a bunch of much younger opponents in convincing style. The story is, however, quite complex as it progresses, and if you see the movie in its original language with subtitles, you may need to buff up your speedreading skills to get the most out of it. However it’s the action that matters, and that’s more than capable of speaking for itself and then some.
The Shadow’s Edge is one of the best action films of the year and it can’t be recommended highly enough – a pleasant surprise, to say the least. More of the same would be welcome and a sequel looks imminent in the near future.
THE SHADOW’S EDGE is released on Blu-ray on October 3rd.
