A reunion of stars ruined by bloat

The star power of Jackie Chan and Tony Leung Ka Fai cannot save poor screenwriting in the saggy cyber-heist thriller The Shadow's Edge

- John Lui

THE SHADOW'S EDGE (NC16) 142 minutes, opens on Aug 16 ★★☆☆☆

The story: A crew of thieves with extraordinary technical skills has the Macau police baffled — the criminals can evade the authorities' state-of-the-art Sky Eye surveillance system.

The cops decide to reinstate cyber-intelligence expert Wong Tak-chong (Jackie Chan), an officer who left the force years ago under a cloud. He forms an elite team that includes He Qiuguo (Zhang Zifeng), a young woman with personal reasons for joining the police force. The team realises that its target is Fu Lung-sang (Tony Leung Ka Fai), a criminal who has evaded capture for years.

The two giants of Asian cinema, Chan and Leung, cross paths every few years. The Hong Kong actors were in the prison action movie Island Of Fire (1990) and fantasy-adventure The Myth (2005), and The Shadow's Edge marks their third collaboration.