On a Friday night in June 1995 I suddenly found myself without adult supervision and it suddenly became "movie night", which was more of a thing when I was a kid. I went to the video store with a friend and settled on City Hunter as I had recently discovered Jackie Chan and I was a huge fan of Operation Condor. This movie is way more off-the-wall and eccentric, and is geared a little more towards younger kids, being based off a popular Japanese Manga and anime series.
Jackie plays Ryu Saeba a womanizing private eye raising the beautiful Kaori, his late partner's sister under the promise of never seducing her once she grows up. Tired of not getting the attention she wants, Kaori runs away and boards a cruise ship, where Ryu has stowed away in pursuit, and just so happens to find Shizuko (the unbelievably cute Kumiko Goto) the runaway daughter of the millionaire he's been hired to find in the process. So far, so convoluted.
While running around the ship, evading the crew, and becoming increasingly hungry, Ryo is absent when a group of terrorists led by Donald MacDonald (prolific stuntman Richard Norton) and his right-hand man Kim (Gary Daniels) take over and strip the passengers of their wealth while playing deadly card games in the casino. Ryo rounds up a disparate gang of misfits and leads the fight back, leading to many humorous fight scenes and creative choreography, including a bizarre fight in an arcade where Jackie and Gary Daniels become characters from Street Fighter 2.
The humor is often quite surreal, and if you can't get into the right frame of mind you likely will not enjoy it much. I recommend watching it subtitled in original Cantonese as much of the nuances and finer details are lost in the original home video English dub (I watched it twice in one night in both dubs). However, there are some jokes here that ABSOLUTELY. WOULD. NOT. BE. ALLOWED. in current year. I'm amazed they even got away with it in 1992, and in a kid's film. How times have changed.
The exteriors of the cruise ship were all shot on a cruise liner parked outside of Tokyo but the interiors were shot on a soundstage instead of the real thing and I have to admit the bland production design and early 90s aesthetic do not compliment each other. Fans of Rush Hour and Jackie's more family orientated movies will still have a bit of a tough time warming to City Hunter, the slapstick absurdity just isn't for everyone, but if you can see past all that it's still a fun, un-PC, live action cartoon. Like Hudson Hawk, you either go along with it, or you just won't understand it at all.
Jackie plays Ryu Saeba a womanizing private eye raising the beautiful Kaori, his late partner's sister under the promise of never seducing her once she grows up. Tired of not getting the attention she wants, Kaori runs away and boards a cruise ship, where Ryu has stowed away in pursuit, and just so happens to find Shizuko (the unbelievably cute Kumiko Goto) the runaway daughter of the millionaire he's been hired to find in the process. So far, so convoluted.
While running around the ship, evading the crew, and becoming increasingly hungry, Ryo is absent when a group of terrorists led by Donald MacDonald (prolific stuntman Richard Norton) and his right-hand man Kim (Gary Daniels) take over and strip the passengers of their wealth while playing deadly card games in the casino. Ryo rounds up a disparate gang of misfits and leads the fight back, leading to many humorous fight scenes and creative choreography, including a bizarre fight in an arcade where Jackie and Gary Daniels become characters from Street Fighter 2.
The humor is often quite surreal, and if you can't get into the right frame of mind you likely will not enjoy it much. I recommend watching it subtitled in original Cantonese as much of the nuances and finer details are lost in the original home video English dub (I watched it twice in one night in both dubs). However, there are some jokes here that ABSOLUTELY. WOULD. NOT. BE. ALLOWED. in current year. I'm amazed they even got away with it in 1992, and in a kid's film. How times have changed.
The exteriors of the cruise ship were all shot on a cruise liner parked outside of Tokyo but the interiors were shot on a soundstage instead of the real thing and I have to admit the bland production design and early 90s aesthetic do not compliment each other. Fans of Rush Hour and Jackie's more family orientated movies will still have a bit of a tough time warming to City Hunter, the slapstick absurdity just isn't for everyone, but if you can see past all that it's still a fun, un-PC, live action cartoon. Like Hudson Hawk, you either go along with it, or you just won't understand it at all.