dorMancyx

Indeed this is the best Jackie Chan movie of the decade. There's parkour, elevator hand-to-hand, parachute, espionage, terrorism, 1v1, 1v2, 1v50, AI, hacking, tailing, anti-tailing and so much more riveting action sequences that simply doesn't seem to end. Jackie Chan and Tony Leung, two of Hong Kong's finest actors with a combined age of 138, are the absolute highlights of the film. The former agelessly humorous, masterful, and unwavering against evil; the latter charismatically menacing, conflicted, and a real beast when it comes to dagger play and family betrayal. Younger performers are also commendable whether Zhang Zifeng or Ci Sha, who all seem heavily trained for their stunts and convincing emotionally. For the down sides, I can bet that 90% of this movie's budget went to actors and action scenes because everything else was truly average - soundtrack, special effects, editing. It's almost giving a really good Internet-created action series. But still, The Shadow's Edge was an entertaining watch that took me back to Jackie Chan's time of prime action genre.

This is not a movie to be enjoyed. Throughout my watch, I feel my intestines knotted from the blatant display of innumerable brutalities during the Rape of Nanking that were unfathomable strategically and ethically. Not a single body of water in the film isn't red, all bloodied by the 300,000 "swines" that were humans. Laudably, unlike some Sino-Japanese War movies that are purely slogan-calling and hostility-instigating, Dead to Rights has a rather impartial and documentary narrative stance, moving the audience by painstakingly replicating the massacre and letting the plot do the talking. While it's typical in this genre of films to vilify the invaders and traitors, Dead to Rights portrays two brilliant counterexamples: Ito's performative kindness and intrinsic cowardice and Guanghai's suppressed sentiments and deepest despair. With that said, performance of all seven protagonists are spot-on, making the choices, sacrifices and sufferings, though mostly fictional truly believable and resounding. Bravo specifically to Gao Ye, who perfectly captures Yuxiu's change from resiliently hopeful to defenselessly abused to reclaiming justice and avengement, as her powerless tears reflect the most inhumane violations done to countless comfort women. In all, Dead to Rights is a soul-stirring piece of work, but please be prepared for the historical pain it conveys. To intrusion and trampling, I shall retaliate with survival and remembering.