City Hunter has Jackie Chan as the hero, Ryo Saeba, based off of the Manga comic of the same name. He gets a job to track down a rich newspaper magnate's daughter, who ends up taking a cruise, meaning Chan has to follow her onto it. The problem: terrorist Richard Norton and his gang, led by his head henchman Gary Daniels, are taking the cruise hostage so they can extort the rich people onboard for their money. Now it's up to Chan to be the fly in the ointment. He's not alone though, we have a baccarat player who's also an expert card thrower, and a government agent undercover as a young lady hoping to pick up some rich businessmen, who are also able to help him. Will they ultimately prevail?
There are a few places to go to with this. Let's start with the action and martial arts. Exactly what you want from Golden Harvest starring Jackie Chan. Some really inspired scenes, culminating in a great finale between Chan and Norton. We also had the iconic scene with Chan and Daniels where they played Street Fighter characters, giving us a sense of what it would be like if Daniels ever got to play Ken. The other place to go is the comedy, and one could make the point that a lot of it didn't age well: we have homophobia, gross chauvinism, with a dash of racism thrown in; beyond that though, I think some of it just wasn't funny. Bits would go on past their saturation point, leaving me wanting the old Vaudeville hook to come off-screen and pull whoever was in the joke off the stage. Some of the humor did work though, especially with Chan, who is not only a fantastic martial artist, but also a great physical comedian, and he delivers that Buster Keaton vibe you want when you see Chan on the tin--and like Keaton, who did black face in College, Chan employs some brown face here when he plays Dhalsim in the Street Fighter scene, but I digress. I think between the novelty of seeing Daniels and Norton together in a Jackie Chan Golden Harvest film, plus the level of the martial arts, this is worth checking out, even if some of the humor will make you cringe a bit.
With Daniels turning 60 in a few days, it's interesting to look at this one from 30 years ago, when Daniels's career was in its earlier stage. Even more interesting is, only two years after this, he did Fist of the Northstar, which was the one he expected to catapult him to the big time, but unfortunately didn't end up working. From there though, he spends the next 10-15 years putting together one of the greatest DTV CVs ever, with films like Bloodmoon; the "three Rs" of PM, Rage, Riot, and Recoil; and Cold Harvest. But then something happens, the 2000s come, and guys like Seagal and Van Damme drop down to DTV, and while someone like Dolph was able to survive, Daniels was given fewer leading roles, in some cases needing to settle for religious films shot in Thailand. He wasn't alone in this though, Rothrock and Wilson also suffered a similar fate, the only thing was, it seemed like Daniels came out on the other side in a bit better place, getting some starring roles again in films like Skin Traffik, Misfire, and Rumble. But when we come back to this one, he has a smaller role, but you can see where he was going, and it's not a surprise that he'd get a part like Kenshiro in Fist of the Northstar, the surprise is that he never quite made that big screen level.
This is our first Jackie Chan film on the site, after almost 1200 posts. I know he doesn't do a lot of DTV stuff--and this technically isn't DTV either--but you'd think we'd at least have a Wild Card post or something like we've had for guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone. I think the big reason why we haven't seen more in his case, is he doesn't have a lot of films like this that have other names, which is the kind of the thing we have to review it whether it went DTV or not. Due to issues with the director, Chan said this is one of his least favorite films, but his martial arts and stunt scenes are what you want from him. What's interesting, if you compare him with Daniels, this is also two years out from Rumble in the Bronx, the movie that got him fame here in the US, and led to a string of big budget Hollywood hits, so while it didn't work out for Daniels, Chan was that marquee Hollywood name for a time. For me, that's what got me to go back to his Hong Kong stuff like this film, after seeing Rumble in the Bronx in the theater, and fortunately as a result of that success, more of it became available. If this ends up being the only time we see Jackie on here--or if we don't see him again for another 1200 posts--at least we got him this one time on the DTVC.
The other Hall of Famer in this was Richard Norton in what is now his 25th film on the site, meaning the 30 Club is on the horizon for him. He's probably one who should've been there sooner, but we tend to lose him for months at a time, and often review films like this one where he's a secondary name to someone like Daniels, which is too bad, because he's big enough on his own, as he demonstrates here. Between the total scenery chewing of his baddie, to the great final fight with Chan, it's all there, everything we love about Norton. One thing that's helped him in recent years has been the advent of YouTube and the availability of some of his rarer titles on there. Something like a Blood Street that I had trouble tracking down, I can now find on YouTube and get reviewed on the site. I think as we wrap up guys like Daniels and Dolph, we'll have more openings for guys like Norton, so it'll be cool to get some of those up on here.
One thing I realized when I reviewed Operation Seawolf a few weeks back, is I'm reviewing Dolph films at a greater clip than Gary Daniels films, and the proof is there in looking at the archives: my last Daniels post was in early December, and since then we've done three Dolph films. I could make excuses, like how Dolph has had more films come out recently and I've needed to prioritize them, but I've also had movies like this in the can for a while now that also have needed a review. Either way, we're now at 57 films for Gary Daniels, three away from joining Dolph in the 60 Club--and joining Dolph as the only stars to have as many films as they have years on the planet--and he's still the only other member of the 50 Club with him. I don't know how much the lack of Daniels has been my fault though. If you look at his IMDb bio, Repeater just came out on Tubi, so I can get that one in; but The Gardner is still only available to rent, Astro wasn't that great and is one I'm reviewing just because it's Daniels, and then he has a couple more religious films, which I do plan to do at some point since I've already done one of his others, but how do you make them a priority when there's so much else out there. All that to say, we'll get Daniels in the 60 Club, but Dolph my still put some space between them for first and second most tags all time.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As of this writing, you can stream this free on Tubi here in the States. That version is the Hong Kong release with English subtitles I believe. There's also an American cut with dubbed voices that may be more your speed, and I think that may be on Amazon. No matter how you see it, this is a fun one that you'll want to check out. And also you'll want to check out the conversation I had about this with Scott Murphy on his podcast All 90s Action, All the Time. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to it on your favorite podcatcher.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103950/
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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