On the Edge

Director: Herman Yau

Plot: Undercover cop Harry Sin (Nick Cheung) successfully manages to arrest Triad Kingpin – Don Dark (Francis Ng). When revealed that Harry is a cop this sends shockwaves through the underworld, friends spite him calling him a traitor, his girlfriend Cat (Rain Li) wants nothing to do with him. He’s traded it all in for the 9-5 life of a Hong Kong cop.

Harry is teamed up with hard boiled cop – Lung (Anthony Wong). Lung’s remained at the bottom of the career ladder with his unorthodox method of handling the local thugs. Things start to get a little hairy when Harry attempts to re-establish friendships with his old triad buddy, leaving the police as well as the triads begin suspect something…

Review: Herman Yau shows his own version of the undercover cop genre proving this isn’t an Infernal Affairs clone. The story cleverly portrays the live of an undercover cop returning to duty and how the world treats him now.

The movie starts off showing you the ending plot twist, then film shows you all the events leading up to the end of the movie. It also includes flashback sequences with Harry proving himself to Don Dark, Harry’s friendship with Mini B and various other situations. The notable difference between flashback and current events is the difference in Harry’s hair colour; all of his flashback scenes show him with dark blonde hair, whereas in actual times he’s back to his natural hair colour.

Francis Ng’s characters screen time is only shown in the flashback sequences as his arrest at the start of the movie. Ng does a good job as usual although I doubt the film wasn’t that much of a challenge for him, I mean who hasn’t seen Francis Ng in a cop/triad flick?

Anthony Wong is put to good use as the main protagonist of the piece, it’s good seeing him playing the bad guy, nowadays he’s typically a typecasted as a good guy, hence Infernal Affairs, Exiled, Colour of the Truth etc. Wong even delivers quite a heartfelt speech towards the end of the movie which was I wouldn’t be surprised if he was nominated for an award for best supporting actor.

Spawn of Eric Tsang, Derek Tsang does quite well as the role of the triad side-kick – Mini B, who ends up becoming paralysed in his left arm after a vicious gang attack. Now he runs a small café protected by Don Dark. Tsang done very well in this movie I’d think it would be an interesting route for him to take, following in his father’s footsteps.

Nick Cheung done good in this role although I feel that he wasn’t mature enough for it, from his looks and age I would have expecting his character to be more vulnerable like his role in Exiled, yet he’s been put over as this ‘triad hard man’ in this films and in similar cases the Election movies.

Rain Li seemed a bit plain in this movie, nothing interesting about her, disposable stuff here. I’m guessing Herman Yau concentrated more on the main storyline rather than padding out the romantic subplot.

Final thoughts, good film, Nick Cheung is digging his way into the limelight and triad drama’s his shovel. Enjoy!

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.0