Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		2.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

City Hunter Blu-ray Movie Review

Hunting but not always finding.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 16, 2013

Note: This film is currently only available in this double feature: Jackie Chan: Battle Creek Brawl / City Hunter.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Jackie Chan is one of the biggest international superstars of his generation, a performer who not only performs his own stunts, but has become synonymous with a certain subgenre of martial arts fare where comedy is often king. But it may surprise some to know that Chan actually not only had a fairly hard time matriculating into the American market, even his early Hong Kong efforts were met with less than resounding success. Though Chan had actually been appearing in films since his early childhood, it took him several tries as an adult to finally break through into mainstream prominence in Hong Kong, ultimately really breaking into the big time with 1978’s blockbuster Drunken Master, a film which perfectly typified what would become the almost patented Chan blend of action and comedy. A couple of years later Chan made his first starring attempt for the American market, Battle Creek Brawl, which bombed pretty spectacularly. He stuck around long enough to play a fairly minor role in The Cannonball Run, before striking out again in The Protector Chan retreated to his more familiar geographical turf for the next several years, increasing his star power and box office appeal in that neck of the woods. It would be close to a decade until Chan finally attempted to reestablish himself once again stateside, and even then it took a little while before he finally had his first true blockbuster, 1998’s Rush Hour. The rest, as they say, is history, and it’s perhaps indicative of how popular Chan has become that few seem to remember his long struggle to achieve that level of stardom. This new double feature from Shout! Factory collects that first American bomb Battle Creek Brawl with a fondly remembered 1993 Hong Kong offering from Chan, City Hunter.

A lot of manga get adapted into anime titles, and so it’s probably understandable that City Hunter, which began life as a manga, has a certain cartoonish aspect to it, one that fits very comfortably into Chan’s typically comedic take on the action genre. There’s an undeniably hyperbolic ambience to City Hunter which needs to be accepted on its own terms in order to enjoy the film’s often manic charms. Chan portrays a kind of private detective bounty hunter who is tasked with finding the missing daughter of a high powered CEO, a girl who has stowed away on a luxury cruise ship which in turn becomes the focus of a hijacking plot by a bunch of nasty bad guys. Plot wise, that’s about it for this film, which relies more on some very inventive set pieces than on any convoluted story mechanics for its pleasures.

The film has several well remembered set pieces, including a highly choreographed scene with a bunch of skateboarders which is a lot of fun, and, later, a scene in a movie theater where Chan watches Bruce Lee in Game of Death (itself about to be out on Blu-ray in the huge new Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection) and “learns” how to effective fight by watching his martial arts superstar predecessor. This set piece element, while undeniably entertaining, also points up one of the central issues with this film: it kind of lurches uneasily from big moment to big moment, with little other than silly shenanigans working as interstitial material.

City Hunter’s unbalanced tone means that the film is kind of like a roller coaster ride interspersed with periods where the ride is “out of order”, so to speak. Over busy action sequences suddenly give way to just flat out banal interludes. The saving grace here is that the film is relatively brief, so that even the less enjoyable and flat material tends to buzz by quickly enough and give way to the more entertaining action elements. Still, City Hunter is one of the goofier films in Chan’s 90s oeuvre.

City Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

City Hunter is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is one of those "glass half full, glass half empty" situations, rather like the other recent Shout! Factory Jackie Chan double feature release, Jackie Chan: Police Story / Police Story 2. As happened in that case, the second film is considerably better looking, at least when compared to the first. Therefore, my perhaps over generous score above must be taken in the context of me having watched this outing directly after Battle Creek Brawl, which looks pretty horrible. City Hunter may in fact be an upscale, but it's a considerably more artful one than Battle Creek Brawl. Colors are better saturated, the image is decidedly clearer (again, this is a relative statement, compared to Battle Creek Brawl), and there is not the rampant ringing and shoddy looking fuzziness that hobbled the earlier film's high definition presentation. Does that mean things are great here? Hardly. There's still an overall softness and lack of fine object detail that at least hints at this being an upscale. My advice: watch Battle Creek Brawl first, and then this presentation will look pretty darn good, at least by comparison.

City Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

City Hunter features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.l mixes in both Cantonese and English. As seems to be the case with many of these titles, the English mix is considerably more amped up than the Cantonese, with louder dialogue, effects and music. That said, some may prefer the original Cantonese track, especially since it doesn't really sound like Chan dubbed his own voice in the English version (I could be wrong about this, but the voice is considerably higher than Chan's voice on the Cantonese track). Fidelity is very good on both of these tracks, and both offer some nice immersion during the big set pieces. Dynamic range is also very wide.

City Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Jackie Chan (1080i; 10:07) is a vintage featurette with Chan. He recognizes how cartoon- like the film is, talking about some of the stunts and action sequences.


• Interview with Wong Jing (1080i; 7:14). The writer-director is a little hard to understand (he speaks in halting English), but he gives some background on the project.


• Interview with Stuntman Rocky Lai (1080i; 10:58). Lai discusses some of the film's outlandish stunt set pieces.


• Theatrical Trailers (1080i; 7:52)

City Hunter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're willing to put up with an unapologetically cartoonish approach, City Hunter is at the very least fitfully entertaining, and for some will be a good deal more than that. Some of the humor is admittedly juvenile, but the action sequences are often spectacular, showing Chan really coming into his own and developing his own unique style. This Blu- ray presentation leaves something to be desired, but at least when compared to its sibling in the double feature it's paired with, looks relatively decent and comes with some good supplementary material.