Man on the Brink

Impatient with low-level police work, rookie cop Chui (Eddie Chen) recklessly accepts his superior’s offer to go undercover. With few ties and an ambiguous moral compass that soon starts to spin out of control, his life outside the underworld begins to crumble.

Following the success of Cops and Robbers (1979), Alex Cheung’s Man on the Brink further redefined the Hong Kong crime sub-genre. While indebted to New Hollywood staples such as Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973), this Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor Golden Horse Award winner unleashed a new appetite for undercover cop mayhem, prefiguring classics such as the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-2003) with its jaw-dropping synthesis of urban grit, realistic drama and high stakes, captured with evocative hand-held, on-location camerawork. A missing link – if not a turning point – in Hong Kong action cinema, ready to be rediscovered.