Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Herman Yau's On The Edge (2006)

Netflix has recently added a lot of Asian movies to their streaming service and I've decided to review some of them. First up, Herman Yau's On The Edge from 2006. It stars Nick Cheung, Francis Ng, Anthony Wong and Rain Li. After the success of Infernal Affairs, Hong Kong movie theaters were flooded with stories of undercover cops and their struggles as triad members. On The Edge was one of the better ones. Nick Cheung is Harry Boy, a cop who has spend 8 years undercover as a triad member, starting as a street brawler and moving up to a key position under triad boss, Don Dark, played by Francis Ng. After Don Dark is arrested, Harry Boy becomes a regular police officer working with Anthony Wong. Harry Boy is treated with suspicion by his fellow cops, and his only friends are triad members who no longer want anything to do with him. Francis Ng and Anthony Wong are playing roles that they are very familiar with, both of them were in the Infernal Affairs series, and they have worked with Herman Yau many times. Nick Cheung is good as the troubled cop. He made the Election films with Johnnie To around the same time. The movie has some good car chases, courtesy of action director Bruce Law. While not as good as Infernal Affairs or the Election films, On The Edge is definitely worth watching, particularly on netflix streaming.

2 comments:

SD said...

Hey Mark-- Hope all's good in Texas. I kept your blog on my Google Reader, and it's good to see you pop up occasionally. (Thanks for pointing out the Pelecanos short story-- I actually liked it more than The Cut, which may be my least favorite Pelecanos to date.)

I hadn't seen this pop up on Netflix yet, but will check it out. I've been making my way through their Jean Rollin collection the past couple of weeks.-- Scott D.

Mark Ferguson said...

Scott,
I listened to the audio book for The Cut and quite enjoyed it. It definitely feels like the start of a new detective series from Pelecanos.
If you are in the mood for a Hong Kong film, I would suggest watching Johnnie To's Election or Mad Detective. I'm going to keep reviewing movies from Netflix but I presume that most of them will be "so-so" films as I've seen most of the recent classic films.
Thanks
Mark