City Hunter (2024)
Don’t you know who he is?
As our typical fashion goes, I put together a collection of trailers and put them out to the crowd, and the crowd has chosen. Action comedy was the winner for tonight, and it’s a name that I recognize. No, not because of the source material - because there was a Jackie Chan movie of the same name that happened to include a scene where characters were getting transformed into Street FIghter characters and it was just as wacky as it sounds. How will this much newer version hold up? One can find out only one way really - time to take a stroll with City Hunter.
This story follows our main character - the city hunter - but in fact actually revolves around other characters in a fun little play. His partner ends up getting killed after they took a job, and tasks him with protecting his sister. Things get a bit more complicated when our playboy of a main character ends up finding the sister constantly shadowing him unless he takes a case to find out who was the cause of her brothers death. Things quickly take a turn in the main story as it progresses - but there are still plenty of times to flop back and forth between humor and the main seriousness. Cosplay, gun fights, fist fights, and a whole bunch of shenanigans await as this case tries to get solved!
Actors do good here from what i can tell. I say it that way because I watched the dubbed version so it’s not necessarily a one to one going on here. Body language wise, there is plenty of nailed actions and stances ranging the gamut from campy over the top grins to serious emotional let off. I’d say that everyone here has done a good job when it comes to the acting, and then I’ll just tag in that there might be some things gained or lost in translation to go along with it. I don’t know the culture super crazy - never been there thanks to my wallet - but even then I can still enjoy the movie with no confusion as to what things are going on or why - so I don’t think most will miss anything if they just come across the movie and check it out.
The characters all play to their role quite well, although I’d say that perhaps character development is a bit at the minimum. There’s some stuff that you could consider advancement, primarily with the sister character as she comes to terms with the world of City Hunter, but you could argue that even the lead gets to feel like he changes a bit. I don’t think it’s necessarily that the character does change from where he started in so much as we the audience get to know the character a bit better as the movie goes that let’s us better understand who he is. The movie doesn’t really suffer from characters being uninteresting though, even if some are pretty big red flags when you see them, because regardless of their level of depth or complexity they .are still fun to be around on the entertainment level - at least in part thanks to the actors doing a good job.
Everybody kung fu fighting.
Outfits here are generally run of the mill - albeit big city fashion has never been my forte so some of the stuff in here seems rather exotic to me in it’s vivid colors and outlandish designs. That being said - nothing feels alien at all, it still feels like a fitting real world setting for that. Some of the baddies feel like they were pulled right out of the matrix, and our lead character gets to sport some pretty eye-candy attire for the ladies (or whoever else might appreciate it). Props all look great, and the violence is pretty much what you would expect for something that’s rated MA. It’s there, but it’s not graphic and most the things that would be theoretically more brutal are offscreen and just leave some blood around in their aftermath. Visually, it’s all pretty fine in here - with probably the most outlandish effect being the vein-bugging from the drug getting used to get people all hopped up bath-salt style.
The action is pretty smooth and wonderful to watch. If you wanted to just laugh and see some cool fights - this is a good movie for you. If you want complete realiism during your fights, you might be a bit less impressed. The movie will flit about with being serious much like it’s realism of things happening at times, and certainly feels like it’s prioritizing fun and a bit of that live action anime aesthetic and exaggeration over being super girtty and realistic, and I can get behind that. The comedy is, as always, subjective to the person watching it. I had fun, I laughed at the varied jokes -including the plenty of pervy jokes at the main characters expense. It’s generally a good time, but maybe it’s not exactly for everyone, and maybe some of it is even lost in translation - but even with that in mind I had a good time, so if you’ve found yourself to have a similar humor type as me through these various reviews, you’ll probably be in good hands.
Audio was pretty good here too. Now, don’t take that as I remember the music afterwards - my cursed memory still remains an issue preventing that - but as I heard it during the movie there was a few times I thought to myself “that was bumping right there, i like that!” Line deliveries for the dubbed version are fine, but since I had those on I can’t attest to the original audio line deliveries. I’ll be honest though, dubbing has never really bothered me, and at times I’d far rather not have to read a movie - especially coming off o a 32 episode series that’s all in Chinese that I read the crap out of the subtitles for. Sometimes the line deliveries feel a bit mediocre or plain sounding perhaps, but I don’t think it’s ever bad enough to be regrettable or take you out of the flick. For the thinking folks, I’m going to just let you watch this and pick it up yourselves - I think i’ve probably prattled on long enough and most the stuff I would have picked out for this movie is all face-level depth at best anyways, so it just gives you another reason to check it out!
The main cast of heroes.
This is a fun movie. If you like action and jokes you;ll have a good time here. It’s got plenty of dubbing options as well, for the folks who have an aversion to subtitles. This can let you enjoy the action scenes and how nicely they are shot without being distracted by the words. It’s put together well, and it’s a pretty good time so even if it slows up a bit you barely notice. I’m sure some folks might not like a character or two - and i don’t think that’s necessarily an intentional thing in as much just some people won’t like a character because of their traits. If you are the kind of person that consumes a bunch of anime, you’d probably be less prone to being effected by this as pretty much every show to ever be released is like that - but you know, just a heads up in that regard. If you’ve got a netflix subscription, I’d say check this one out for a good time.