Welcome, one and all, to "Tales of the Longbox", here on Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm taking a look at a Hong Kong action comedy from 1993. That movie is "City Hunter".
Now, I saw a clip of this movie on YouTube last year. And the clip involved Jackie Chan and some other guy, as they were both dressed up as Chun-Li and Ken from Street Fighter, while fighting each other in the style of Street Fighter. And ever since I saw that clip, I was interested in checking out this movie just to see what the context was behind that scene. And since this movie is based on a Japanese comic strip, I can count it as part of "Tales of the Longbox".
Now aside from that one clip that I watched, the only other thing that I can tell you about this movie is that it stars Jackie Chan. And I can also tell you that I've never read any of the books, or seen the anime of "City Hunter". So, I don't even know if this movie is loyal to the source material it's adapting from. I can also tell you that 20th Century Fox published this movie. And the only other time that I can recall Fox putting out a movie based off of an anime was "Dragonball Evolution". And most people know how that turned out. Now, mind you, I did watch "Dragonball Evolution", and I thought it was OK. It wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't as horrible as everyone made it out to be. Then again, I'm not a huge fan of "Dragon Ball" to begin with, so I went into it with low expectations.
But unlike my experience with "Dragon Ball", I literally have no idea what to expect from this movie, outside of that one clip I watched. And if this movie turns out to be any good, I may have to check out the books and find some episodes of the anime. But the only way I'm gonna know how good or bad this can be, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "City Hunter".
5 minutes later
So, our main character, City Hunter, is still asleep, all the while laying on top of the car that his partner is driving. I totally understand that having a dream where he's in a pool, while surrounded by a bunch of beautiful women sounds awesome, but dude, there's a time to wake up and realize where you are. That, to me, guys, just takes over-sleeping to the extreme.
9 minutes later
You know, guys, even though the dub for this movie is a little bit lacking right now, I will say that the stunt work in this movie is awesome. This is some really creative stunt work. And I am certainly hoping that the dub will improve as the movie goes on.
13 minutes later
So, upon seeing one of our female detectives, whom was trying to flirt with City Hunter, mind you, he sees her breasts as hamburgers, and her arms and legs as pieces of chicken. I get that he's still feeling the effects of the ship horn from earlier, but it's still kinda messed up, especially when he was actually trying to get a bite out of her hamburger breasts.
4 minutes later
OK...we're in a musical now...? And it would probably sound better, if this singing, and the song in general, didn't flat out suck balls. You guys can't hear this for obvious reasons, but this song really sucks. Mind you now, the music in this movie has been fantastic. But this song here is kinda bringing it down slightly.
15 minutes later
Well, guys, I just learned something new today. City Hunter really sucks as a physical fighter. But unless he sees a Bruce Lee movie playing, then he starts kicking ass...sure. Why not? I'm willing to roll with that.
4 minutes later
Wait a second here. So it took this long for Shizuko to recognize that it was City Hunter who was with her, despite the fact that she saw him earlier after she was approached by him at a park, and again, after she was taken hostage by one of the terrorists. How dumb is this bitch? You mean to tell me that she didn't recognize his face, despite seeing him twice beforehand? I'm sorry, guys, but that just comes across as really stupid to me.
15 minutes later
All right, that was fucking hilarious. Instead of falling for this female detective's looks, this random terrorist literally beats the shit out of her. I understand that it makes me sound like a terrible person, but the fact that it just came out of nowhere makes this scene all the more funny. It was dark, but funny as hell.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "City Hunter". Let me shut the movie off...OK. Where do I even start? Well, as I have stated earlier, I have never read any of the "City Hunter" books, or even seen any of the anime movies or TV shows. And because I haven't, I don't even know if this thing was even half loyal to whatever it was adapting from. But I will say that the movie was pretty good. It has it's problems, but I'm gonna explain why some of it can be overlooked.
The first thing I need to talk about is the humor. Since this movie was advertised as a comedy, it would be beneficial if I talked about the comedy in this movie. Because this movie does not, if rarely, ever takes itself seriously. And the few bits of serious moments are more played for laughs. Some of it is pretty funny, other times it kinda falls flat. And then there a couple of moments where the jokes have some level of context. And I'm not just talking about the scene where City Hunter is fighting some of the bad guys in the style of Street Fighter. One of them I mentioned is way late in the film, where some of our side characters are trying to out-maneuver one of the terrorists. And, I believe, one of the female detectives tries to seduce him with her looks, but it ends up backfiring as he physically beats the shit out of her. Now, by itself, it was funny as hell. At least, to me, it was, because I am a fan of dark humor. But there is a reason why he did that. And I'm not gonna go too deep into it, on the off chance you want to go and see this movie for yourself. But I will say that the end result is a moment of clarity, where you will know what the context was and understand why the terrorist beat the shit out of one of the female detectives.
While I'm on the subject of humor, it's a little bit all over the place. Because there are a ton of jokes involving sex, food, and lots of physical and slapstick humor. And this movie makes it clear to the viewer that you're basically watching a live action cartoon. And if you're expecting this movie to have one serious moment, it doesn't have very many of those. Because this movie knows what it wants to be, and it stays that way throughout the 99 minute runtime. This movie always has something different going on with it's comedy, and it doesn't let up on it. That being said, this movie does have it's problems. The biggest one has to do with it's pacing. Because this movie drags on at certain points. One of the biggest examples I can think of is the final showdown between City Hunter and the movie's villain, MacDonald. The fight itself drags on for far too long. Partially because the movie was trying a bit too hard to space the comedy out during the fight. Now, some of it was kinda funny, but the movie did not need to drag it's final fight for that long. And I totally understand that you want to have a big final showdown between the main hero and the main villain, especially in an action movie, but still, you could've totally shortened the fight some and it would've been a little bit better.
As for our characters, a lot of them are not ultra deep. But as I mentioned before, you don't necessarily need it when making an action movie. The only ones I can recall by name are City Hunter, which is Jackie Chan's character in this movie. I want to touch upon that for a moment. Because as I was reading the back of the DVD case for this movie, it states the main character's name as Ryu Saeba. But for whatever reason, the movie decides to call him City Hunter. So why bother even mentioning a different name for our main character if you're not gonna call him that throughout the movie? I don't know if it was because of a translation issue, or an issue involving the dub, but whatever the case may be, it just seems weird to me that the movie just kept calling him City Hunter instead of just Ryu. But that's honestly a minor issue, so I'm not gonna get too deep into that. Then we have Kaori, who is City Hunter's partner and has a love interest for him. It's a little bit weird there, because she was being taken care of as a child by him from his former partner, so to see her having a love interest for him, even as an adult, just comes across as a little bit off-putting to me. And then we have Shizuko, who ran away, and her father, who is the head of a Japanese newspaper, assigns City Hunter to look for her and bring her home to safety. One point I want to bring up regarding that is when City Hunter first finds her at a park, and when he tells her to come with her, she goes to one of the skateboarders and tells him that City Hunter was trying to molest her. Now, that's not the issue I had. Yeah sure, lying to him that City Hunter was trying to molest her was kinda stupid on her part, but that's not really much of an issue. The issue comes later when she encounters him again in the cruise ship after being held hostage by one of the terrorists, whom was disguised as one of the boat captains. After City Hunter rescues her from him, she asks who he is. And she doesn't recognize him until after a scene where City Hunter shows her a mini-computer that can scan for fingerprints and knows who it came from. And after he demonstrates it, she then finally recognizes who he is and slaps him. Mind you, she saw his face when he first encounters her. How the hell did she not pick up on that fact after being saved by him the first time? The very fact that she didn't recognize him then comes across as really stupid, and she should've picked up on who he was just by facial recognition alone.
But beyond those problems, the writing here is still pretty good. It's really the humor that is going to be the deciding factor here. And I'll talk more about that when I get to recommendations. Now we get to the acting. Now, I went into this movie, not knowing that this movie had two different dubs. There's the English dub, which is the one I watched, and the Chinese dub. And the English dub here is almost laughably bad. Now, when I initially when into this movie, not knowing that this was an English dub, I was wondering why Jackie Chan's lines were dubbed over? Because I know that Jackie Chan can speak pretty good English, so I was curious as to why his lines needed to be dubbed. Well, when I was watching the movie, I did remember that the movie was made in Hong Kong, and you had a good mixture of both Asian and European actors who, probably, didn't natively speak English. So I can give the movie some leeway there. I kinda wish that they had picked some better voice actors who could've done a better job, but as I said, the dub here is almost laughably bad, that you could go into this movie and have a fun time laughing at some of the kooky acting. For example, I didn't like Jackie Chan's voice actor at first, but as time went on in the movie, I kinda got use to the sorta shitty acting. The one actor who I thought did phone it in badly was whoever voiced Shizuko's father. Because the delivery of all of his lines are so wooden, that it actually makes him the worst actor in the entire movie. However, he only appears during the beginning of the movie, and again right towards the very end. So you won't have to put up with his wooden performance for too long. Overall, guys, the dub acting kinda sucks, but it actually makes the movie a little bit charming to watch. However, if you're not into movies with kinda bad dubs, then this movie does offer an option where you can watch the movie with the Chinese dub, so there is that.
There isn't a whole lot of special effects in this movie. I did notice one small thing, and you would really have to stretch it if you were to notice it. But it's during the scene where the characters are dressed up and are fighting as characters from Street Fighter. I'm not totally sure who it was, but I think it was E. Honda, where he was flown towards a wall by the guy dressed as Ken. The thing is though is that, during that quick moment, you can tell that it was just a dummy that they used. However, you would really have to stretch it to notice something as trivial as that, so I'm not gonna count it as a negative. Most of the special effects, outside of gun blanks, came from this Street Fighter scene, and most of them looked really decent, especially for a movie made in 1993, so I can say that the special effects, what few there are, are rather well done.
Camerawork here is pretty good, save for a couple shots that looked a little bit poor. And those come in during when one of the terrorists is chasing after Shizuko. She ends up on a tightrope, and as the terrorist is trying to pull down the rope to get her down, we get to see Shizuko doing some flips, but for a couple of these shots, the camera looks really blurred out. And I don't know if that was just for a visual effect, or if it was filmed poorly, but either way, it was kinda noticeable. The lighting is well lit. The sound-mix is mixed well. I do need to touch upon sound effects, though. Since I mentioned that this movie has a lot physical and slapstick humor, there are a ton of sounds effects that you will hear as though they came from a cartoon, and it can be seen as sorta distracting. But then again, since this movie is basically a live action cartoon, it kinda works here. Music, for the most part, is really good, except for one scene, and I touched upon it during the reaction portion of the movie. There's this one song that plays during the movie, and it's sort of a musical number, and the song is complete shit. Not just the song, but the singing as well. I'm not totally sure if it was Chinese, or Korean, or Japanese, but whatever the case, the song sucked, and it really stands out, when you consider that the rest of the music is rather good. But that one song was just awful, and it dragged on for about 2 and half minutes. So I can probably add that song to the pile of pacing problems the movie had. But everything else, in terms of music, is really good.
So, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "City Hunter"? If you are able to go into this movie, knowing that the comedy is nonstop, then yes, I can totally recommend it. However, if that isn't your thing when it comes to comedies, then I can't recommend it, especially knowing that the comedy in this movie can be seen as rather odd. But for everyone else, I would say go ahead and check it out. And after watching this, I kinda want to go and check out the books. I'm not totally sure which ones I should start with, but I'll worry about that once I eventually find them. Right now, I kinda want to go and watch another comedy. And seeing as how I got into this thing because of the Street Fighter scene, I think I'm gonna go and watch the "Street Fighter" movie from 1994, because I absolutely adore that thing.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.
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