{"id":80409,"date":"2026-06-20T09:38:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T01:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80409"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:38:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T01:38:30","slug":"the-shadows-edge-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80409","title":{"rendered":"The Shadow’s Edge (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It’s been a long time since I’ve watched a proper Hong Kong action movie though this may not quite qualify. It’s set in Macau and mainly uses Mandarin with a odd smattering of English. It’s even adapted from a Hong Kong movie from not too long ago. It’s overly long, is too hung up on twisty plot points and escalates the scale of the action to absurd levels. Nonetheless it genuinely is an spectacular action flick, probably Jackie Chan’s best in years, and with Leung Ka-Fai turning in a fantastic performance as a scarily threatening villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Heavily reliant on an AI-based surveillance system, the Judiciary Police of Macau are defenceless against a heist crew who are seemingly able to penetrate their systems at will, rendering them blind. They are able to raid secure vaults to steal cryptocurrency keys and employ sophisticated disguises and exfiltration techniques to escape. Their mentor and leader the Shadow however is enraged when the team strays from the plan to pursue a target of opportunity, putting his identity at risk. He is a former intelligence officer and the five members of the crew are all considered his adopted sons from an orphanage he supported. The police bring in retired expert Wong Tak-Chong to lead their efforts to identify and apprehend the Shadow. Wong discovers that as the police have disbanded their covert surveilllance teams in favor of surveillance cameras, he has to train a new one all over again. Among them is He Qiuguo, a young woman whose father was killed in the line of duty during an operation with Wong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a slick-looking, fast-paced film with what looks like a serious budget. The young members of the heist crew have boy-band looks and smooth moves as they fight and leap off skyscrapers. The command center of the police is right out of science-fiction with comprehensive real-time coverage of the entire city and an AI constantly recommending moves to counter the crew. The irony of the film of course is that all of these slick toys are useless when the criminal hackers are able to control everything that the police are able to see so they are forced to fall back on old-fashioned human intelligence. It’s a fairly fun if not altogether original conceit. It’s expected in this case for the film to glaze the oldies, hyping up their skills in comparison to the young ‘uns. They unfortunately overdo it in the case of the Shadow by having an old man armed only with a knife fight off dozens of opponents which ruined my suspension of disbelief. But I did like that for Wong’s character, they let him be an old dog who can still learn new tricks and there is a clear sense of him passing the baton to the younger generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best parts of the film are when Jackie Chan and Leung Ka-Fai get to interact with one another, especially in the cat-and-mouse sequence is which Wong is still trying to pass himself off as a civillian. Unfortunately that is only a small portion of the film. The younger actors all do their best but it is striking how they are so much less charismatic than the old stars. One rationale for remaking such a recent film is to update it with modern technological advances. But it’s absurd that the criminals can run rings around state actors and it’s ridiculous to raid data vaults to steal cryptocurrency keys. Having the criminals hire mercenaries to directly assault the police is way over the top. The film relies on an unnecessarily complicated plot and a lightning-fast pacing to hide the thinness of the plot. DIrector and writer Larry Yang would have done better by elaborating on the complicated relationship between the Shadow and his adopted sons while trusting in a simpler plot with lower stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t watch very many action movies these days and it struck me how difficult it is to find one that is all around good. It’s actually easier to identify good dramas and other serious artistic films that are outstanding in one or two ways and otherwise good enough in all other respects. But action movies are perhaps too constrained by commercial considerations. They manage to offer a decent spectacle but are invariably flawed in a few ways. The Shadow’s Edge<\/em> is a pretty good case in point. It’s look good, has decent action, and the chemistry between the two leads is fantastic. But it’s still let down by a silly plot and implausible levels of escalation and that is seemingly the best that we can expect from action movies these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched a proper Hong Kong action movie though this may not quite qualify. It’s set in Macau and mainly uses Mandarin with a odd smattering of English. It’s even adapted from a Hong Kong movie from not too long ago. It’s overly long, is too hung up on … Continue reading The Shadow’s Edge (2025)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80409"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80478,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80409\/revisions\/80478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}