This ultimately leads to Shizuko donning a disguise and seeking refuge on a cruise ship, where, coincidentally, Kaori is also set to take a vacation with a cousin who’s romantically interested in her, just in case there weren’t enough gags to make you feel uncomfortable already. This leads to a large scale skateboard chase which might have been a major highlight of the film, were it not for the fact that – gasp! – Jackie clearly has a stunt double for the fancier skating tricks.
Ryu first tracks her down in the city (well, he is a City Hunter, after all), where she’s hanging out with a gang of skaters. It’s almost reminiscent of the Hartigan/Nancy storyline from Sin City, only with the older male having seemingly no understanding of why entering into such a relationship would be morally wrong nor does City Hunter’s eye-widening political incorrectness end there, with numerous instances of men beating up women played for laughs, and a number of overtly homphobic moments including an AIDS joke, all of which leaves me a bit surprised the BBFC have passed the film as a 12.Īnyway, after a staggeringly overplayed joke about Kaori’s inability to rouse Ryu from his slumber (hence the cover art shot of Jackie lying asleep on top of the red sports car), they accept the assignment to locate the missing heiress Shizuko (Japanse idol of the day Kumiko Goto), who’s run away from home in a standard fit of adolescent rebellion. This is a question which one would have hoped would go without saying given that Kaori is prepubescent in that prologue scene, yet now that she’s all grown up, the ladykiller PI finds it harder to stick to his word, particularly given that Kaori herself clearly has romantic feelings for him. All the while he’s tended to by his ward/assistant Kaori (Joey Wang), who, as the film’s prologue tells us, is the younger sister of Ryu’s now dead partner, whose care was entrusted to Ryu on the strict condition that he should never seduce her. Plot-wise, I’ve pretty much said it all already: Jackie is Ryu Saeba, AKA City Hunter, hot-shot private eye living the boy’s own adventurer dream going on daring missions and residing in a fancy garage filled with guns, cars and motorbikes. As ever, the leading man’s charisma shines through, and some might consider its deliberate cartoonish excess part of the charm yet in comparison both to Jackie’s classics from the preceding 15 years, and the comic book movies that have come since, it’s hard not to find it all a bit too over-the-top.
CITY HUNTER JACKIE CHAN MOVIE FULL
However, watching City Hunter I’m reminded of Guillermo del Toro’s lament in the DVD extras of Blade II, of how most filmmakers approaching comic book adaptations, particularly in the 1990s, seemed to “think they’re making movies for retards.” Not unlike Tank Girl, Barb Wire and Joel Schumacher’s Batman films, City Hunter stands to demonstrate just how far comic book movies have come in the years since, as the charming goofiness of Jackie’s best work is cranked up to full capacity in a madcap spectacle which goes out of its way to defy logic, physics, and often the basic laws of coherent filmmaking. On paper, Jackie’s signature comedic style and the comic book genre would seem natural bedfellows.
CITY HUNTER JACKIE CHAN MOVIE SERIES
Released in early 1993 (immediately after what some might say was Jackie’s true masterpiece, Police Story 3: Supercop) and directed by Wong Jing, it’s a live action adaptation of a Japanese manga series of the same name, which casts the notably-not Japanese leading man as a devil-may-care, womanising private eye hired to find the missing daughter of a newspaper magnate. However, for their latest hi-def reissue from Jackie’s back catalogue, Eureka bring us the perhaps more surprising selection of City Hunter. From the late 1970s and well into the 80s, Jackie pumped out hit after hit in this format, several of which – notably Drunken Master and the first two Police Story movies – have been recently brought to Blu-ray in the UK by Eureka. Jackie Chan, as anyone can tell you, pioneered the martial arts action comedy, punctuating awe-inspiring displays of physical daring and expertise with immaculate comic timing and irreverent sensibilities which have resonated with audiences worldwide for decades.
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