City Hunter (film)
| City Hunter | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Wong Jing |
| Produced by | Chua Lam |
| Screenplay by | Wong Jing |
| Based on |
City Hunter by Tsukasa Hôjô |
| Starring |
Jackie Chan Joey Wong Kumiko Goto Chingmy Yau Carol Wan Leon Lai |
| Music by |
Romeo Díaz James Wong |
| Cinematography |
Lau Moon-tong Ma Gam-cheung Gigo Lee |
| Edited by |
Cheung Ka-fai Peter Cheung |
Production company | |
| Distributed by |
Golden Harvest Gala Film Distribution |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Language | Cantonese |
| Box office | HK$30,762,782 |
City Hunter (Chinese: 城市獵人; Sing si lip yan) is a 1993 Hong Kong action comedy film written and directed by Wong Jing, starring Jackie Chan, Joey Wong, Kumiko Goto and Chingmy Yau. The film is based on the Japanese manga of the same name. The film was released in the Hong Kong on 14 January 1993 along with Stephen Chow's Fight Back to School III.
Plot
Ryo Saeba and Kaori Makimura are assigned to locate Shizuko Imumura, the runaway daughter of the CEO of a prominent Japanese newspaper. Kaori leaves in the middle of the search, unhappy with the way Ryo ignores her romantic feelings for him and flirts with other women. Ryo finds Shizuko at a skateboarding park and a chase ensues, but she escapes in disguise.
Shizuko boards a luxury cruise liner, the Fuji Maru, with the ticket she found in the suit she stole. Kaori also boards the ship with her lustful cousin while Ryo sneaks inside to follow her. A terrorist gang led by Donald Mac have plans to hijack it and take the rich passengers hostage with Police Officer Saeko Nogami and her buxom sidekick in pursuit.
Staying next door from each other, Shizuko overhears Donald's plan. Donald discovers her and sends one of his men to kill her, but she knocks him out and escapes. She then bumps into the ship's first officer, who takes her to the boiler room and reveals himself as a terrorist. When he attempts to silence Shizuko, Ryo, who had been staying there since his encounter with Kaori and her cousin at the swimming pool, saves her. When Donald's gang arrive, the officer is killed in the shootout while Ryo and Shizuko escape into the movie theater, where Game of Death is being shown. To beat two towering opponents, Ryo interprets Bruce Lee's techniques from the film.
At the ship's casino, a party hosted by the captain is interrupted when Donald kills the captain and terrorizes the partygoers, including Saeko and her sidekick. After robbing them of their valuables, he entices the rich patrons into a sadistic card game. A few opponents are quickly disposed of until Kao Ta, a skilled card gamer who uses his cards as shurikens, joins in. When Donald is distracted by seeing Ryo and Shizuko not far away, Ta and Saeko put an end to his game.
Donald's henchman Kim kidnaps Kaori and takes her to his room. When Ryo bursts in, both men fight before Donald and his men interrupt, capturing Ryo in the process. Kaori escapes, bumping into Shizuko, Saeko, and the rest of the main characters. They take down a gay terrorist trying to seduce Kaori's cousin and prepare to save Ryo.
The next day, Ryo is stood before a firing squad. Shizuko, Saeko, and her sidekick interrupt the planned execution, but are forced to separate by Donald's gang. Shizuko uses her gymnastic skills to defeat one henchman, Saeko saves Ta after he runs out of cards in a fight with several terrorists, and her sidekick falls off a ledge and is left unconscious. Ryo goes into the gaming parlor with his hands still tied, but is thrown into a Street Fighter II arcade game by Kim and suffers an electric shock. This causes him to hallucinate and think Kim is Ken from the game. After a failed attempt to defeat him as E. Honda, Ryo defeats him as Chun-Li.
As a Taiwanese counter terrorism unit, the "Thunderbolts Squad", arrives and take his men out, Donald blows up bombs he had set up all over the ship and takes Kaori hostage at the casino. When Ryo and Saeko arrive, he injures both women and starts a long fight with Ryo. However, Donald is thrown into the stage and dies when he accidentally steps on his remote, setting off the bombs behind the T.V. panels.
Ryo and Kaori find Shizuko and return to her father. He speaks to Ryo privately, seeing him as a future husband to Shizuko. Listening to their conversation, Kaori leaves in anger, unaware that Ryo has declined the man's offer. However, Ryo finds her and tries to apologize with a rose, but then Saeko drives up and flirts with him. He gives her the rose instead and furious, Kaori smashes him through the air with a big hammer. Ryo wakes up in his recurring dream with beautiful women at the swimming pool.
Cast
- Jackie Chan as Ryo Saeba
- Joey Wong as Kaori Makimura
- Leila Tong as Kaori as a child
- Kumiko Goto as Shizuko Imumura
- Chingmy Yau as Saeko Nogami
- Carol Wan as Saeko's friend
- Leon Lai as Kao Ta the gambler (Kao Ta the Wanderer/Gao Da the Wanderer)
- Pal Sinn as Rocky Dung
- Lo Wai-kwong as Chen Ta-wen
- Eric Kot as DJ Hard
- Jan Lam as DJ Soft
- Richard Norton as Col. Donald "Don Mac" MacDonald
- Gary Daniels as Kim / MacDonald's henchman
- Yip San as Woman surprising Ryo
- Josephine Lam as Woman surprising Ryo
- Donna Chu as Woman surprising Ryo
- Michael Wong as Hideyuki Makimura
- Peter Lai as Man wearing white suit in store
- William Tuan as Cruise passenger
- Kenzo Hagiwara as Koji Imamura
- Vincent Laporte as Vincent Vu
- Mike Abbott as Mike Vu
- Louis Roth as Cruise Purser
- Lee Tat-chiu as Ship crew member[1][2]
Production notes
- It is set and filmed at Hong Kong in 54 days on 9 March – 2 May 1992.
- The name of the Street Fighter character was changed to "E. Honde" from "E. Honda". This was because Chan has a contract with the Mitsubishi car company, and Honda is the name of a rival company.[3]
- The Street Fighter sequence was recorded in real time, with wirework and special effects enhancing the action, to match it with the arcade fighting game, as can be seen in the special features of some DVD releases of the film. They also used the SNES Music instead of the CPS-1 Music.
- There were time constraints on the preparation of the film to release it on time for its release on the Chinese New Year. Near the end of filming, shots of Chan's final fight scene with Richard Norton, had him doubled by stunt performer Mars to save time on reshoots.[3]
- After the initial shooting of the sequence by the ship's swimming pool, people working on it felt that the women in the background of the scene were not pretty enough. Film director Wong Jing agreed and moved filming of the sequence to Ya Ma Tai Sports Recreation Centre.
- The skatepark at the beginning of the film was filmed in Hong Kong Park and Victoria Park, Hong Kong. During the skateboarding sequence in the downhill chase scene, Chan twisted his ankle as he jumped onto a skateboard. Following the injury, pro skateboarder Rick Ibaseta donned a Chan lookalike costume and performed the remainder of the scene. In other skateboard stunt scenes, Miguel Rosales, Hudson Chang & Rocky Ng were the stunt doubles for Jackie Chan.
- According to his book I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, Chan dislocated his shoulder during production.[4]
- The gambling area filled with televisions and a dance floor was shot in the Shaw Brothers Studio.[3]
- During production, director Wong Jing and Jackie Chan took such a disliking to each other that Wong Jing's next movie, High Risk starring Jet Li, featured a character who was a vicious satire of Chan. Jet Li later publicly apologized to Chan for his role in that film.
Reception
The movie received mixed reviews upon its release. The movie has a 43% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.5/10 ratings on IMDb.
Home media
On 23 April 2001, DVD was released by Hong Kong Legends in the United Kingdom in Region 2. Two years later, Fortune Star released a 3 disc set on 29 December 2003 with two other martial arts films: Story of Ricky and The Dragon from Russia. In the United States, the first DVD release was a port of the Mega Star Region 0 release repackaged by Tai Seng. Later on, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released a region 1 DVD in 2004 utilizing the remastered Fortune Star transfer. It was released again in 2012 by Shout Factory in a double feature single disc with Battle Creek Brawl on both DVD and Blu-Ray.
All currently available versions restore a scene that was removed from both the theatrical release as well as the LaserDisc versions of the film. The scene involves one of Kaori's suitors going on a rant about foreign tourists (to wit, Richard Norton's band of terrorists) and saying that he hopes they die of AIDS in Chinese, only to discover that they understood him very well. The scene was removed because the film's distributors were concerned that foreign audiences might be offended by the homophobic nature of the scene.
See also
References
- ↑ City Hunter at HKMDB
- ↑ City Hunter at chinesemov.com
- 1 2 3 City Hunter (film), Audio commentary by Bey Logan, Special Features (DVD featurette) (DVD). Hong Kong Legends, UK. 1992.
- ↑ Jackie Chan. "Jackie's Aches and Pains: It Only Hurts When I'm Not Laughing". Random House. Retrieved 2012-12-19.
External links
- City Hunter at the Internet Movie Database
- City Hunter at AllMovie
- City Hunter at Rotten Tomatoes
- City Hunter review at Trash City