Jackie Chan is Ryu Saeba, the eponymous City Hunter. He’s a private investigator, womaniser, and all-round arrogant hero. He once had a partner who was unfortunately killed (though Ryu claims it was because he wasn’t there). His partner’s dying wish was that he looked after his sister, pre-teen at the time, and to promise that he would never seduce her like he had a tendency to try and do, looking at the 12 year old girl Ryu agrees. Unfortunately for Ryu, his partner’s sister Kaori grows up into a lovely-looking young woman who not only becomes his new assistant but is also in love with him. She is constantly frustrated by Ryu’s fondness for the ladies, but keeps trying to win his affection anyway, planning a cruise on a new liner for the both of them to celebrate his birthday. However Ryu is called to the building of a Japanese businessman who wants the City Hunter to locate his teenage gymnast daughter Kiyoko, who ran away from home when he wanted to remarry. Ryu and Kaori travel to Hong Kong to find her, but after an elaborate skateboard chase she eludes Ryu, and stealing a man’s clothes as a disguise she discovers the ticket for a cruise in one of the pocket. Meanwhile Ryu returns home to find a gaggle of women waiting for him, who secretly want revenge for our hero getting them all arrested and put in prison. Kaori returns to find Ryu with the woman, gets annoyed, and takes her lecherous cousin on the cruise with her instead, which incidentally is the same cruise Kiyoko just boarded!

Ryu desperately tries to catch Kaori before she gets on the cruise liner, but finds himself having to stow away on board when he’s kicked out for not having a ticket. Also on board the liner are some suspicious westerners lead by MacDonald (Richard Norton) and Kim (R0D fave Gary Daniels!), an agent of some sort named Saeko Nogami (Chingmy Yau of Naked Killer fame) who is on board with her goofy cousin as a cover for an investigation into an alleged hijacking attempt to be made on board. Are you keeping up so far? There’s also Tramp Kao Ta, the gambling king of Asia who happens to also be an expert martial artist who has a talent for using playing cards as deadly weapons, there’s also a couple of incredibly goofy comic relief guys who turn up occasionally to be invasively annoying. Kiyoko (that’s the businessman’s daughter in case you’re getting lost, I know I am) is unfortunate enough to be in the cabin next to our scheming whitey bad guys and after one of the henchmen accidentally sets off his gun, Kiyoko puts her ear to the wall and hears their whole plan for taking the millionaires on board the ship hostage and taking them to Thailand. She is discovered however and tries to escape, saved by the hungry Ryu, desperately searching the ship for food without being caught by any of the crew. MacDonald crashes the festivities on board the ship and takes control with his heavily-armed cronies, intent on taking all the money he can and killing everybody. However with Kaori and her lecherous cousin, Saeko, Tramp Kao Ta, and the City Hunter himself on board, he’s got his worked cut out!

Like I said, I haven’t seen the City Hunter manga or anime at the time of writing this, so I have to review this without making any comparisons to the source material. However, on its own merit, this is comical, crazy, yet rather violent movie. Apparently Jackie and his co-director Wong Jing did not get on at all during the making of this film, leading to a rather public dispute between the two, though the film has not noticeably suffered for it. City Hunter is a little like Steven Segal’s Under Siege, only with Jackie Chan’s trademark wacky sense of fun soaking into much of it. Jackie totally plays Ryu Saeba for laughs, constantly mugging and acting foolishly, though that still doesn’t get in the way of his performance in the action sequences, his fights looking as crisp as ever, this IS the perfectionist Jackie Chan after all. The film is filled with pratfalls, stupid facial expressions, and inane dialogue and performances. There are a number of entertaining action sequences too, though most are played for laughs or have such a zany soundtrack playing over them that they can’t be taken seriously. The combination of comedy and action reaches a demented peak when Kim throws Ryu into a Street Fighter 2 arcade machine, and they take on the appearance of the characters and are accompanied by music from the game, which anyone who has played it should get a kick out of.

The comedy doesn’t always quite fit though, especially due to the surprising amount of violence in the movie, especially towards the women. The four female characters, at one time or another, are punched, kicked, dropped, fall down stairs, get knocked silly, and are generally bashed about in the name of comedy. Sometimes it works, but it occurs far too often and goes against the fun-loving nature of the movie. Also, there is perhaps just a little too much comedy. Kaori has her weird cousin who hates City Hunter and wants to get in her pants, Saeko has her goofy cousin who keeps getting into mishaps, then there are the two weird guys who just pop up and act like idiots for no good reason, and lets not forget that Jackie is playing City Hunter for laughs too. The wacky spirit of the production has a habit of diluting the action at times, such as the fight sequences being accompanied by cartoony music, and women getting punched in the stomach just so they can lie on the floor with stupid expressions on their faces. As with a number of Hong Kong movies I’ve seen, there are quite simply too many characters, Tramp Kao Ta is especially useless and feels very tacked-on, he has a couple of memorable sequences but they make no difference to the plot and don’t really seem connected to the rest of the movie, ultimately he’s wasted.

However, this is still an extremely enjoyable movie. Jackie, as usual, has a couple of great fights, one with Gary Daniels and then the final showdown with Australian martial artist Richard Norton. The one with Norton was especially good, taking six weeks to shoot you can see just how much work went into each intricate set of moves, and it makes for a spectacular climax. The fight sequences are probably where Jackie’s goofing off works the best too, it never gets old seeing him block attacks with a part of his body and then having to retreat because it hurt him so much, makes him far more human. There is also a nice tribute to Bruce Lee as Jackie fights two large black fellows in a theatre that is showing the fight between Bruce Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar from Game of Death, Jackie copying Bruce’s moves against Kareem in order to beat them. The humour, though at times excessive and not always hitting the mark, is broad enough for most people to ‘get’, rather than some Hong Kong comedies that don’t translate so well to people unfamiliar with the culture of its origin country. Indeed, I laughed out loud a couple of times which I’ve not done since I first saw Chan’s excellent Armour of God.

Being a Hong Kong movie its still not going to appeal to everyone, but Chan has created another action packed comedy that is a fine addition to the genre, and well worth seeking out for some admittedly quite low-brow but exciting entertainment.