Edge of Fear (2/5)

Edge of Fear is a new thriller on Netflix. The story and characters feel like something out of a 1980s movie, so watch it as a campy movie. Otherwise, you will probably just be annoyed.

Edge of Fear is a very classic home invasion thriller out on Netflix now. Really, it’s so classic that you feel like you’ve seen it before. It feels like a throwback to the 1980s action movie storyline.

Actually, it’s not even just the storyline. It’s also the music, the dialogue, the characters and the sound effects.

If you watch Edge of Fear as a sort of homage to movies from +30 years ago, then you should enjoy it. I’m just not sure that this was the intention of the movie.

Prison Break reunion in Edge of Fear

If you watched the TV show Prison Break, then you should recognize a lot of the actors in this movie. We have Robert Knepper, Amaury Nolasco, and Rockmond Dunbar in the cast.

Also, the director is Bobby Roth, who directed several episodes of the series back in its original run from 2005.

Other well-known faces include Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) and Jodi Lyn O’Keefe (The Vampire Diaries). But two of the most important characters are played by Chinese actors Zhu Zhu and Shen Lin.

While I didn’t know Shen Lin, I have seen a few movies with Zhu Zhu. She was in Cloud Atlas by The Wachowskis and the Netflix series Marco Polo.

The unlikely hero

I’ll be completely honest and admit that I thought Shen Lin would be a martial arts expert along the lines of Jet Li. If Shen Lin knows any kind of martial art, then we certainly don’t get to see it in Edge of Fear.

Instead, he portrays a kind (and somewhat naive) doctor, who thinks all people are good and decent. When he realizes they are not, he uses his wits to fight them. His character was very annoying to me at first but did grow on me.

However, it was pretty distracting that his English is really bad. Or rather, it was distracting that the words and emotions didn’t match very well. Accents are fine, but the dialogue needs to be believable.

Still, I ended up really liking the way his character kept fighting. Even if it did seem strange that he was super weak one second and yet performed incredible stunts the next.

Nothing if not entertaining

Is Edge of Fear a good movie? Not exactly. Will you roll your eyes at some point? Definitely. Does it have funny moments? Absolutely! And will it entertain you? It definitely should.

It may not be entertaining in the way the director and writers intended. But it isn’t boring to watch. And fortunately, it does seem like the actors are on board with the quirky story and characters.

Also, there’s a very funny scene with Amaury Nolasco and Jodi Lyn O’Keefe which made the movie for me. Watch Edge of Fear as a sort of spoof on 80s action thrillers, and you’ll be fine.

Edge of Fear is out on Netflix in most countries now!

Details

Director: Bobby Roth
Cast: Rockmond Dunbar, Zhu Zhu, Shen Lin, Robert Patrick, Robert Knepper, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe

Plot

After being stabbed in the heart by ruthless home invaders, a man is left for dead. He is weak, outnumbered, and has a knife sticking out from his chest. Still, he attempts to do the impossible: save his wife from these murderers before he bleeds to death.