The Shadow's Edge

[Drunk Monk]

The Shadow’s Edge

Fuck Karate Kid Legends. Moving on…

This is getting solid buzz. Might have to check it out. Opens this week.

It looks fun. When will it hit Netflix, I wonder?

It’s in US theaters right now.
There are 3 Jackie movies that have yet to be released on a North American streaming platform: Panda Plan, A Legend & Hidden Strike. Panda Plan got released to DVD & BRD - KFM did a sweeps promo for it. Hidden Strike was ‘23. The other 2 were ‘24.

Holy Cats! That was fun. This is Jackie Chan at 71 reclaiming his crown as the King of Action. So fun. So Jackie.

It has that old Hong Kong skool 80s police procedural spirit. Some preposterous leaps in surveillance and observation and absurd criminal identity concealment, but once that's accept this movie moves along at a steady clip. Then it goes full Hong Kong ballistic and literally explodes. Absurd action overkill. In a flash, a firefight turns into a major siege with car battering rams and lots of exploding. These are Kung Fu superheroes. No one is Jackie Chan. No one comes close. 

Jackie plays a retired cop now dog walker named Wong who gets called back to deal with the Shadow, a supervillian played by veteran HK star Tony Leung Ka-Fai. There's a lot of old skool vs modern kids and analog vs tech stuff.

The fights are one shot / 1-3 moves but it's that kinetic Jackie choreo where you can disassemble a pistol while fight the person trying to shoot you with it. Jackie takes some falls. Jackie does a big car crash stunt - he pulls out to safety much quicker than he did when he was 40, but if he hadn't moved, he would've been crushed by a flying car for real. 

Jackie also delivers a solid emotional performance. He's still working out issues with his real life daughter, and there's a lot of parent child themes. Playing opposite Zhang Zifeng playing Guoguo, his dead former partner's daughter. 

It's melodramatic and nationalistic. At one point, I was getting misty over the noble sacrifice of Macao cops anfter a rousing speech by Jackie. Wait, what? I don't even know why that worked so well on me. It was overplayed like Hong Kong cinema does. But for me, it worked. 

There's a subtle dig at Karate Kid: Legends. The Shadow's Edge starsthe Jackie/Jaden Karate Kid actors Yu Rongguang (Master Li / Kreese) ad Wang Zhenwei (Cheng / Johnny Lawrence). 

It also stars Xing Yu looked remarkably young, so much so that I thought it was just a young and up and coming action star that looked like Xing Yu. He's 47 now I think and plays a background hench in his 20s. That's the Shaolin monk I trained with in 95 & 96 whohas gone on to become a major action star. 

Ultimately, it's all about the action. This is Jackie at his purest. He's using a stuntman (has been for years now) but delivers a lot of the fights personally. His gait is a bit off, there's a limp and a waddle, and I'm not sure that him acting. Nevertheless, he still moves better than I have ever moved in my life. Some of those flips, falls and fight scenes are clearly him and he's still so agile and clever about how to stage the hits for maximum impact. It's sanguineous - sanguineous in that 'I'm going to stick my thumb in your wound for break your chokehold' way. 

Absolutely D00M recommended. 

Note: the theater was almost full. I was the only person in the front row (center) but all the other rows were filled except some of the side seats. All Chinese. And eveyone I saw as I cut through Whole Foods was Chinese, excpet two angry looking dudes and two dreads. What is happening??