|
Directed by: Wong Jing Starring: Jackie Chan, Richard Norton, Chingmy Yau 1993’s Cheng si li ren aka City Hunter is a really dumb movie. It was so dumb I laughed. Based on the manga and anime series of the same name (which explains why he gets hit with a giant mallet in the film), Jackie Chan plays well known Japanese private eye Ryu Saeba: The City Hunter. Hired to keep an eye on the daughter of a newspaper tycoon, Ryu soon finds himself on a cruise liner along with a number of crazy characters including a pair of sexy undercover agents, a gambler who flings playing cards like ninja stars and his dead partner’s sister Kaori, who pines for the affections of Ryu. After a three minute intermission featuring the worst and most obnoxious musical duo ever, City Hunter soon moves into a “Die Hard on a Boat" plot, as Jackie and his cohorts try to free the hostages from terrorists as we lead up to the inevitable confrontation with bad guy Richard Norton. Wong Jing is known as Hong Kong’s master of schlock and thus fills City Hunter with a whole boatload (pun intended) of really dumb gags that just seem really out of place for a Jackie Chan movie. From a hungry Ryu imagining Chingmy Yau’s breasts as tasty hamburgers, to the perpetually horny cousin of Kaori being molested by a homosexual terrorist, City Hunter is loaded with this gratuitously lowbrow humour that often sits uneasily with the sudden violence that’s brought upon by the bad guys. Also adding to this is the whole cartoonish slant of things, as if the filmmakers thought translating the visual conventions of the comic and anime would work on screen (it often doesn’t). Meanwhile, Jackie seems to take the role of the womanising Ryu with gusto, but watching him straying from his more familiar on screen persona as he lustfully ogles women just left me feeling a little dirty. However, from an action standpoint the movie does deliver somewhat with a good but over-the-top skateboard chase and a challenging fight against two towering terrorists in a cinema screening Game of Death. Also, despite being marred by horrible lighting, the lengthy fight against Richard Norton at the end was quite exciting. And of course, no review of City Hunter is complete without mention of the infamous Street Fighter II sequence, where Jackie Chan dons the guises of all your favourite Street Fighter characters in dealing with a thug dressed like Ken. A sequence that has to be seen to be believed, it is hands down the highlight of the film. In the end enjoyment of City Hunter may differ depending on your tolerance of dumb, lowbrow gags. While I thought it was a dumb movie, it did entertain me, and I laughed at all the stupid poo poo. 2.5/5 PROS: It has Jackie Chan dressed up like Chun Li. CONS: It has Jackie Chan dressed up like Chun Li. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103950/
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2004 07:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 04:21 |
|