City Hunter
1992
Director: Wong Jing
Writer: Wong Jing
Stars: Jackie Chan, Joey Wong, Chingmy Yau, Richard Norton, Gary Daniels, Leon Lai
Based on a popular Japanese manga (comic book). Chan plays Ryo Saeba, a womanizing private eye who is hired to find a Japanese businessman's runaway kid. He screws up the job and returns to his base, only to piss off his partner Kaori (Wong), who then goes off on a cruise -- with Ryo in hot pursuit. While on the ship, a group of terrorists led by Norton and Daniels take over ala Die Hard and Ryo (along with secret agent Yau and mysterious gambler Lai) decides to help.
Like most of Wong Jing's film's, 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, culminating in an excellent fight between Chan and Norton (one of the better gweilo actors/martial artists).
Turn off your brain and you should have fun with this one. Hey, any movie with Chingmy Yau in a black leather Lara Croft-style outfit can't be all that bad.
RATING: 7
Note: Tai Seng has recently put out City Hunter on VHS. While the picture is crisp and letterboxed, it is dubbed (ergh!), but that actually adds to the craziness in the film. Some friends and I watched the dubbed version and didn't stop laughing the whole time. It's a great version to watch with a few adult beverages -- it at least beats watching most of the bad quality fan subtitled versions circulating the net. There is also a new HK DVD version which includes both the original language and the English dub -- which makes it the best version out there.