City Hunter

Buy This Item City Hunter by 20th Century Fox  Available from Amazon  $9.98  on 11-27-2008     Based on a popular Japanese comic strip, Hong Kong's high-flying martial arts action hero Jackie Chan stars as private Ryu Saeba in City Hunter. Hired to find the runaway daughter of a Japanese publishing tycoon, Ryu's first impulse is to turn the job down - until he sees a picture of the beautiful Shizuko (Kumiko Goto). Hot on her heels, Ryu tracks her down on board a cruise ship, and much to the annoyance of his jealous female sidekick Kaori (Joey Wong) the womanizing Ryu seems more interested in catching Shizuko's attention than returning her safely to her father. However, Ryu's romantic plans quickly go astray when a gang of ruthless criminals hijack the ship and hold the passengers to ransom. To save the day Jackie Chan's unique action style reigns supreme in a series of brilliantly conceived fight sequences as Ryu swings into action to dispatch the bad guys and rescue the goergeous Shizuko! Reader Reviews This really isn't that bad of a movie for what it is. City Hunter is based off of the Japanese cartoon City Hunter, and although this is not an animated film, it is presented as such with loads of cheesy dialouge, goofy characters, cheesy music, and cartoony sound effects. If that wasn't enough, the English dubbing version makes it just about as silly as it can get. Chan's voice unfortunately is not dubbed by himself in the English version, although his English voice-over is present in many of his H.K. films. The biggest reason anyone may want to own this film is that is also features charcaters played by Richard Norton (Road House 2, Mr. Nice Guy, Rage and Honor) and Gary Daniels (White Tiger, Rage, Riot) - the two bad guys. At some point you may end up turning this movie off before the end arrives, if you are not into such a goofy film. However, the ending is rewarding with a strong 5 minute fight with Jackie Chan against Richard Norton. Easily the best entertaining fight in the film, the Richard Norton character beats up Chan repeatedly with 2 short poles that can change into numchucks. Jackie does some cool small stunts using chairs and tables in the scene. There is also 2 fights with Jackie against the Gary Daniels charcater. The first fight is pretty short in a cabin on the cruise ship. The 2nd fight is just the silliest darned thing I have ever seen. Street Fighter video game fans might enjoy it. Jackie is thrown into an arcade machine, electricuted, and begins to take the form of various Street Fighter 2 characters, while Gary Daniels is Ken. The scene is no more than for laughs. The fight is set to look like someone is button mashing the controls to the game. When Chan becomes Chun Li, that was actually pretty funny. As for the story itself, its pretty simple. A bunch of bad guys led by the Richard Norton character board a cruise ship and eventually expose their demands - robbing the crew. Jackie Chan gets involved and tries to stop them. The film is filled with action, but its mostly gun fire and chases, aside from the 2 forementioned fights. Although most Jackie Chan films are never very serious, this one is beyond silly. Its set to be that way, so if you are ready to see a cartoony film created with real people, then you may want to check it out. It tries to be funny throughout, but it pretty much failed for me.

City Hunter Available from Amazon Price: $9.98 Updated on 11-27-2008.

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