Kelly WandCity Hunter
August 16th 2006 06:52
Which brings me to Hong Kong Legends. Okay, I know it is a peculiar little backwater of the Universal group of companies but, unusually, someone in the corporate wasteland seems to actually give a shit about what goes out on the label. Even if you haven’t seen or heard of a particular film, anything carrying that particular logo is worth picking up.
All right. I know some people out there can’t see the virtues of Hong Kong cinema but the snob in me likes to view them as an insidious criminal underclass. If you number yourself amongst these ne’er-do-wells, nothing I am going to write here will convince you to break the bad habits of a lifetime. Let me try anyway, If you’re on the side of the angels, come along for the ride.
City Hunter is absolutely out there. It is so out there that it seems like an artefact retrieved from an alternate dimension. Jackie Chan plays the eponymous City Hunter, some kind of private eye who is fabulously successful despite the fact that he can’t walk past a banana peel without slipping on it. He promises his dying partner that… Hold it a minute. Let’s not bother with the plot. The plot is just a big old hook to hang the stunts and the gags off of. You’d have to be insane to try to describe the beginning, middle and end.
That’s not a bad thing either. I’m sure writer director Wong Ching wasn’t too worried about anything as dreary as story lines. He just keeps the whole thing moving from one outrageous sequence to the next with such frantic pacing that you just give in to it. The cast are all in on the gag. They mug for the camera, make fools out of themselves and appear to be having the best damn time of their lives.
Despite the fact that he has a visage like a repeatedly squashed tomato, the most beautiful women in Hong Kong cinema all throw themselves at City Hunter. Of course, they all seem to miss and end up literally falling flat on their faces and upper torsos. This could be very politically incorrect if it was not for the fact that all of these women seem to possess the kind of martial arts’ abilities that would enable them to beat the living crap out of me. (Or, for that matter, anyone who has ever previously beaten the crap out of me).
There are all the great set pieces to look forward to. There’s the skate board chase and the fight in the cinema showing Bruce Lee’s “Game of Death”. There’s the gayest song and dance routine in human history and the bizarre moment when combatants are transformed into characters out of the arcade classic “Street Fighter 2”. Chan, in particular, looks stunning in pig tales and a little blue dress. I was laughing so hard, I had to jump back the DVD and catch what I missed when I was rolling around the floor.
If you’ve just read this review and think the film sounds like rubbish, there is no hope for you. Of course, it is rubbish. It is the best damn rubbish in the world. Take it from me, man cannot live by good taste alone. There are some films that are worth leaving your brain at the door for. This is one of them.
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Comment by Bob Short
I believe it is, though I haven't actually had the pleasure of seeing a copy myself. Some of these older anime books are alittle hard to get hold of, particularly in English Translation. If anyone wants to point me and Charles in the right direction, you know where we are.
B