City Hunter (1993)
Reviewed by: mrblue on 2004-06-18
City Hunter is based on a popular Japanese manga (comic book). In it, Jackie Chan plays Ryo Saeba, a womanizing private eye who is hired to find a Japanese businessman's runaway kid (Kumiko Goto). He screws up the job and returns to his secret base, only to piss off his partner Kaori (Joey Wong) with his chauvinistic antics. Kaori goes off on a cruise, with Ryo in hot pursuit.

In the oh-so-convienent world of action movies, not only is the runaway on the same cruise, but also a group of terrorists led by Richard Norton and Gary Daniels. They take take over the ship ala Die Hard and hold the passengers hostage. Ryo, along with a femme fatale secret agent (Chingmy Yau) and a mysterious card-throwing gambler played by Leon Lai, decide to help and eventually save the day.

Like most of Wong Jing's movies, City Hunter goes all over the map. Most of the film is played for laughs and has a very cartoonish feel to it, complete with Warner Bros.-type sound effects. The last part, with Ryo taking on the terrorists, still has a high level of comedy to it -- including a sequence where Chan transforms into characters from the Street Fighter II video game -- but pumps up the action level. It all culminates in an excellent fight between Chan and Norton, who is one of the better gweilo actors/martial artists (and the only actor to be the main villain in two Jackie Chan movies).

If you're not normally a fan of Wong Jing's work, you're probably not going to find too much to change your mind with City Hunter. But if you're willing to turn off your brain, you should have fun with this one. The film has a good number of solid brawls (courtesy of the excellent action director Ching Siu-Tung) and some nice eye candy from the female leads. In my book, any movie with Chingmy Yau in a black leather Lara Croft-style outfit can't be all that bad.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]