The Shadow’s Edge Review: Jackie Chan And Tony Leung Ka Fai Face Off In A Knife-Fight Showdown For The Ages

The Shadow's Edge (NC16)

Starring Jackie Chan, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Zhang Zifeng, Ci Sha

Directed by Larry Yang

This is Jackie Chan’s best action movie in years.

No. Make this Tony Leung Ka Fai’s best action flick ever.

Because the man topples Liam Neeson as the old guy who suddenly turns into a new action star. He stabs, slashes, axes maybe 200 young punks, Old Boy-style, in one insane 10-morgues-also-not-enough massacre scene.

Man, this pic is a die-die-must-catch-him trailer thriller about undercover surveillance cops in Macau tailing an elusive, very dangerous cyber-heist mastermind-assassin codenamed Shadow (Leung).

Actually, back in 2007, Leung played a similarly surveilled villain in Eye In The Sky.

The first half of this China deal — the quieter hunting portion conducted by good guy Chan — is a captivating cat-and-mouse kicker. Unfortunately, the second half — upping the action and focusing more on Shadow's complex father-figure relationship with his youthful criminal gang led by Ci Sha (Creation Of The Gods) — goes overblown bonkers.

Chan plays Officer Wong, a tracking expert mothballed out of retirement to train a bunch of inexperienced agents in the old school un-tech way of sharp observations, patient stakeouts and careful trailing from an unseen distance. Since their target is so tricky he fools police cams and ultra-fancy detection systems with his own AI hack-tech and team of cocky felons who confuse their pursuers with disguises before jumping off high-rises using parachutes.

“Don’t spook the shadow,” Wong instructs his fave rookie monitor, Guoguo (High Forces' Zhang Zifeng), who's frustrated that he keeps her in a boring surveillance van instead of the field work she craves. She's the daughter of his partner who got killed many years ago. So it's kinda personal for Uncle Jackie.

FYI, at least this film doesn’t dodgily de-age Chan in flashbacks. It casts a younger actor who looks not a single bit like him.

After a riveting risky encounter with Shadow at a market, the police pair improvises and ends up sharing a tense dinner with their quarry himself in an apartment while sizing each other up. It’s great nostalgic fun in this accidental summit of two very familiar Hong Kong veterans in a PRC sea of people.

By the way, the outtakes show both fogeys goofing around singing a Cantonese song together off-cam.

We get this terrific veteran chumminess, although latently sinister here, before the plot, written and directed by China’s Larry Yang who paired Chan with a horse in the 2023 comedy Ride On, careens into an absurd multiple-endings mode that sets up a sequel.

I mean, what cops would still tiptoe-trail a confirmed madman even after an entire police HQ has been ruthlessly attacked by foreign mercs? Even you would Rambo-charge in with at least a kopitiam chair, right?

Director Yang however shows a deft hand in his action scenes. Big shootouts, vehicle smasheroos, stunt-team fighting with Jackie taking on agile mainlanders three times younger.

The big crazy wower here is new action dude Badass Tony totally wrecking a seaside restaurant in a prolonged knife-brawl showdown with Uncle Jackie.

Oh boy, old boys, it’s truly awesome.

They go at each other mano-a-mano, senior vs senior, Jurassic Part vs Jurassic Part, as though medical insurance hasn’t been invented yet.

Forget the Pioneer Generation.

This is Pioneer Degeneration at its best right here. (3.5/5 stars) out in cinemas