The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2022: City Hunter (1993), directed by Wong Jing

 The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: 'City Hunter (Sing Si Lip Yan)' by Jackie Chan

       Are there films from China and Hong Kong that are based on novels that I could have done? Of course, some of the most famous and successful stories of all time came from China, and they’ve been adapted to film dozens of time. Are there films from China and Hong Kong that don’t star Jackie Chan? Yes, in fact we’ve even covered some in the past Marathons. But god damn it sometimes you just want to watch Jackie Chan do wacky and incredibly dangerous stunts, which for me is every October in between 30 other movies. Also I believe this is the movie where Jackie Chan cosplays as Chun-Li from Street Fighter, and I can’t truly die until I see that. That’s not hyperbole by the way, I was actually cursed by a witch last summer who was really into martial arts movies.

       Released in 1993, City Hunter was written and directed by Wong Jing and produced by Chua Lam through Golden Harvest, Paragon Films and Golden Way Films, based on the popular manga series by Tsukasa Hojo. Jackie Chan stars as Ryu Saeba, the private detective known as City Hunter, although he seems to prefer pretty ladies and eating over solving cases. Today Ryu has been hired by newspaper magnate Mr. Imamura to find his daughter Kiyoko, who in a fit of teenage rebellion has run away from home. Simple enough, until the case moves onto the luxury liner Fuji Maru, which aside from having its maiden voyage is also being targeted by an international gang of thieves. Now Ryu not only has to recover Kiyoko, but he also has to stop a boat hijacking while trying to salvage his relationship with his assistant Kaori. All on an empty stomach! What’s a poor City Hunter to do?

       Going into this movie, my first question was ‘how are they going to make Jackie Chan suave’? I mean you look at how Hojo drew City Hunter and it gives the impression that Ryu is the smooth, Han Solo type of badass, and while I’ll always contend that Jackie Chan is cool it was always based more so on what he could do rather than how he acted. Well it turns out the answer is ‘they didn’t’. Out of all of Jackie’s films that I’ve covered on this blog, City Hunter is far and away the goofiest, with some kind of gag or joke just about every minute. If you remember Roger Rabbit and the ways Zemeckis interpreted cartoon visual gags into live action, it’s very much the same for City Hunter, whose antics feel straight out of the anime trope handbook. Perhaps even more than Roger Rabbit, which at least had the benefit of a toon environment. City Hunter has folk transforming in video game characters and getting hit with comically oversized hammers with no attempt at reconciling it with reality.

       Which I guess could be considered City Hunter’s biggest flaw, depending on your connection to the source material. Having never really read City Hunter or watched any of its numerous OVAs I have no idea if this film could be considered a loving tribute or outright parody of Hojo’s work. I can tell you that it doesn’t take itself or its story seriously; Even at the very beginning of the film where Ryu is discussing the brutal murder of his former partner the scene is done in a very slapstick manner, so there’s very little in the way of emotional weight or depth. Yet the film is written in such a way that it kind of expects you to understand the references? Is this Tim Burton’s Batman or more like The Guyver?  I dunno, the whole thing ends up feeling like a fever dream by the end, hyperactive and often horrifyingly incoherent.

       One thing that is consistent however is the action, because Chan knows his audiences. Nothing especially elaborate/bone breaking, but the level of stunt and fight choreography is still leagues above others in the field, which is only compounded by the cartoonish elements. The Street Fighter tribute is a definite highlight, but I also really loved the climax of the film with the dancing gunplay and the final fight, which is a great showcase of Chan’s agility and dexterity. The man is a living highlight reel.

       City Hunter gets the recommendation. While the overwhelming goofiness could be a turn off to some, don't really need a running gag of a dude trying to bang his cousin, it maintains the level of action quality that Golden Harvest built its legacy on, so if not acceptable it’s at least tolerable. Pair it up with Wheels on Meals for more wacky kungfu antics.

The Fugitive (1993), directed by Andrew Davis

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "The Fugitive" by Merle Haggard

       The 1990’s were really the last gasp of 1960’s nostalgia, before all of pop culture was subsumed by the 80’s retrovirus. We saw it in fashion, we saw it in music with the rise of jam bands and the return of Woodstock, and it happened in the world of cinema with a legion of 60’s shows being adapted for the big screen. Mission Impossible, The Addams Family, The Brady Bunch, Josie & the Pussycats, The Flintstones, The Wild Wild West, Doctor Who, even Batman took an ill-fated turn towards his Adam West past. While it is the tendency of modern audiences to denounce reboots or revivals of anything, and some of these remakes ended up falling flat on their giant robotic spider faces, several more were great success and were seamlessly absorbed into the pop cultural consciousness, either proving that good stories stand the test of time or justifying major studios pushing out remakes in the first place. Take your pick.

       Of these revival shows, the one that looms the largest is The Fugitive. Ever since I was a kid I have constantly seen this film referenced by other films and TV shows, to the point where (much like Star Wars) I feel like I have a working knowledge of the film through cultural osmosis. Still the desire to see where all the references originated from has lingered in the back of my mind, even if it’s never been in the running for a Marathon entry, and before I get back into the Marathon grind I figured this was a good time to cross it off the queue.

       Released in 1993, The Fugitive was directed by Andrew Davis, written by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy (who you might know from the Riddick films) and produced by Arnold Kopelson through Kopelson Entertainment, based on the TV series by Roy Huggins which ran from 1963-67. Harrison Ford plays Dr. Richard Kimble, a Chicago surgeon who arrives home one night to find his wife Helen dead, murdered by a one armed man. The cops, helpful as ever, decide to arrest him instead, and thanks to an unfortunately vague 911 call from Helen before her death, Kimble is convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. On the bus ride to the big house however, a series of events leads to the bus crashing, and Kimble getting free. Now he’s a fugitive, moving from place to place, sneaking around back alleys and night-fueled streets as he tries to track down the mysterious one armed man. One step behind him is U.S. Marshall Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), the man who will not rest until Kimble is in chains and behind bars, no matter what. The chase is on, and Kimble better run.

       The Fugitive then is a binary story -- One half the murder mystery plot and the other Gerard’s hunt for Kimble. The former could possibly work on its own, but combining Kimble’s hunt with Gerard’s hunt gives the film an enormous boost of energy. By the first 30 minutes we have some of the most out and out action in the film, including the scene at the dam which has been referenced ad nauseum, and every scene after that is suffused with a frantic energy. Any moment a cop could round the corner or a passerby could recognize Kimble’s face, and because we are beside him we share in that tension as it crests and recedes, driven forward by James Newton Howard’s score like a runaway train. Only increasing as Gerard’s net tightens, and the two plots converge more and more towards the explosive climax. Rather than saying that they don’t make films like this anymore, because of course they still make thrillers, but The Fugitive was definitely one of those films from the 80s and 90s that seemed to capture a ‘classic Hollywood’ feeling with a then modern coat of paint. The kind of movie that Hitchcock would have made, although he’d have probably tried to squeeze in a beautiful female love interest in there somewhere.

       The Fugitive is also built around two performances, that of Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble and Tommy Lee Jones as Samuel Gerard. Harrison Ford...is Harrison Ford. The man had spent the last decade playing Hollywood’s most lovable rogues and badasses, so it’s an interesting change of pace to see him behind the 8-ball here, more haggard and weather-beaten than ever before, even if it’s not earth-shattering. For Tommy Lee Jones, this is a career-defining performance. Samuel Gerard is the complete opposite of Richard Kimble: where Kimble is quiet and reserved, Gerard is boisterous and condescending. Where Kimble is alone, Gerard is surrounded by people, or more accurately subordinates. And where Kimble is ultimately a good person, going out of his way to help people even when it puts him in danger, Gerard ultimately isn’t -- driven to capture Kimble not out of any sense of justice but because the law demands it, and everything else a distant second. All of which he conveys with an ease that feels utterly believable. Jones, more so than Ford, is what makes The Fugitive the film that it is, and it’s no wonder he was later picked up for the MIB films. The dude is concentrated lawman in a can.

       My biggest issue with the film actually comes from the film’s most famous scene, the showdown at the dam. Kimble appears to be caught; Behind him Gerard waits, gun drawn, and in front of him a raging waterfall and a  several story drop in the river below. Throwing caution to the wind, Kimble decides to jump into the waterfall...only it’s not Harrison Ford leaping over the edge obviously, but a dummy. It’s so obviously a dummy that it actually took me out of the movie for a moment or two. Considering that earlier in the film we had an action set piece involving a runaway train that looked very well done, it only makes it stand out even more. Unfortunately I don’t think there was a way to make it look good in 1993, they could have used a bluescreen but you’d probably still be able to tell. Plus a bluescreen would have denied the filmmakers the pleasure of chucking a dummy off of a waterfall, and who am I to deny their fun?

       The Fugitive gets an easy recommendation. It takes the core of the original series and boils it down to its essence, managing to update it for moviegoers at the time without losing sight of why the story was successful in the first place. It’s also just a good thriller film on a base level, which doesn’t require any knowledge of the TV show to succeed. So if you like good thriller films, then you should give The Fugitive a try, and if you’re a one armed man, you better watch your ass buddy. We’ve got out eyes on you.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Groundhog Day (1993), directed by Harold Ramis

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Every Day Is A Holiday", by DOPE LEMON (feat. Winston Surfshirt)

      There are a myriad of Christmas movies. There are movies about Halloween, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July and St. Patrick’s Day, and there’s probably a movie or two involving Hanukkah somewhere in the vast depths of the cinematic trenches, besides that one Rugrats TV special. As far as I know though there is only one movie about that most sacred of holidays, the day that everyone waits for with bated breath and girded loins: Groundhog Day. Maybe it’s because I saw a video on youtube showing off Groundhog Day 2, the official sequel in VR game form, but suddenly I felt an urge to return to this movie that I believe I watched over a decade ago. Unfortunately this meant that the film that originally occupied this space had to go, a little something by the Coen Bros. if you’re curious, but this blog being what it is there’s no doubt we’ll be seeing them again sometime in the future. Unless we get stuck in a time loop, I guess.

      Released in 1993 through Columbia Pictures, Groundhog Day was directed and co-written by Harold Ramis (who you might know from Animal House, Meatballs, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and about a dozen other things) and Danny Rubin (who you might know from...well, pretty much just Groundhog Day). Bill Murray stars as Phil Connors, a narcissistic and mordant weatherman for a Pittsburgh news station who along with his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) who travel to the town of Punxsutawney to cover the Groundhog Day festival and to see whether Punxsutawney Phil, the titular hog, will see his shadow and thus damn the world to six more weeks of winter. The day doesn’t go well; Phil hates Punxsutawney, hates the people, hates the festival and that damn hog and he’s not exactly subtle about it, much to Rita’s chagrin. Were it not for a surprise blizzard shutting down roads and phone lines he would be out of there like that (insert finger snapping here), and when he goes to bed that night he swears that tomorrow will be the last day he ever sets eyes on Punxsutawney again.

      Only tomorrow never comes. When the clock hits six Phil Connors awakes to find that is once again Groundhog Day; The same song on the radio, the same people at the same places, and when he goes to bed the clock strikes six and it all happens again. At first Phil is rather pleased, reveling in his newfound freedom from consequences to indulge in all manner of vices, as well as try to get inside the pants of Rita. That sense of satisfaction quickly turns sour however, and not just because Rita rejects him at every turn. When you know that anything and everything you do will be wiped away by the next day, when you know everything that will happen because you’ve seen it happen again and again and again. How does a man cope with eternity? If he crumbles, can he put himself back together again? Better figure it out soon, it’s Groundhog Day tomorrow.

      Harold Ramis had primarily been a writer at this point in his film career, as I mentioned earlier, and we know what he liked to do as writer: Dry wit, screwball comedy, characters that are smarter than anyone else in the room. All or which is still present, but this collaboration with Danny Rubin has introduced an emotional core that had heretofore never really been present in a Ramis film. Groundhog Day is funny, sure, goofy even at times, but there also times when it’s not funny at all. When it is fact serious, either in a positive way (Phil’s budding relationship with Rita) or negative (Phil’s spiral into rock bottom), and indeed in its overarching existential theme of finding meaning in one’s life and in our relationship with other people. Had things tipped more towards Animal House it wouldn’t have worked, it’s the humanistic element that makes it.

      Who better to exemplify that balance than Bill Murray? Seriously, I can’t think of many comic actors that go from detestable to lovable in as few steps as Murray. He takes a quarter step back and he immediately goes from a guy you wouldn’t piss on if he were on fire to a guy you’d want giving the toast at your wedding. I’d even go as far as suggest that it was this film, rather than The Razor’s Edge almost a decade earlier that really redefined Bill Murray as an actor. He went in the Bill Murray of Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters and out came Bill Murray of Lost in Translation and Rushmore.

      He is supported by a great cast. No big names, but they’re unique and, like Phil, seeing them over and over again really inures you to them. I could see the argument that Rita doesn’t stand out enough as a character to be the female lead in a romance story, and you could probably debate the logic of a woman falling heads over heels for a guy that she previously thought was a chode in less than 24 hours, but she certainly looks the kind of woman you’d spend an infinite amount of the exact same day trying to get close to her. It’s a bit strange seeing Chris Elliott playing a character so down-to-earth as well, but I honestly forgot he was in this movie from the last time I watched it so it was a nice surprise.

      Groundhog Day is one of those movies that is so ubiquitous at this point that recommending it is probably unneeded, so I’m going to recommend it anyway. It’s an interesting premise that is properly explored and pushes a worthwhile message, seasoned with gallows humor, and served with a romcom. A ‘feelgood’ movie if ever there was one. If you’re interested digging into that Second City/SNL oeuvre this probably wouldn’t be the movie I’d lead with, but it would definitely fit into the must-see category. Doesn’t even have to be on Halloween, just make a holiday of it some day. Unless we get stuck in a time loop, I guess.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Last Action Hero (1993), directed by John McTiernan

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Big Gun", by AC/DC

     You know, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to these days. ‘’Em’ in this case meaning anything you want, video games, books, food, et cetera, but in this case we’re talking about. Used to be that if you threw a guy through a window or drove a car off the side of a cliff then you knew that was a real person/car on the screen, rather than a computer drawing made by some nerds in a studio somewhere. Used to be that action movies were lead by action stars, hard-boiled predominantly white men who liked to sweat and engage in wanton violence, rather than lean pretty boys who can’t even throw a punch without fifteen edits. Where are the John McClane's these days? The Dirty Harry Callahan's? The whoever Jean Claude Van Damme played in his movies? Gone the way of the dinosaur I’m afraid, while studios focus their time on silly things like multi-billion dollar superhero franchises and Pixar movies. I mean how many guns were even in Toy Story 3? Shameful.

     So who better to make an action movie about those action movies than the people who helped define them? People like John McTiernan (director of Die Hard, Predator, and The Hunt for Red October), Shane Black (screenwriter for Lethal Weapon 1&2 and Marathon alum The Monster Squad) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (star of every major action movie in the 80’s that didn’t star Sylvester Stallone)? I mean this was the 90s after all, the decade that was largely built on making fun of stuff from the 80s. It would be only three years later that we would see the release of Scream after all, the film that took the slasher horror film and reduced it to a series of tropes and stale cliches, it’s only natural that a similar coda would be attempted with the red-blooded two-fisted action movie. If only all genres could be this ironic.

     The year is 1993, the place is the old school sleazy New York, and young Danny Madigan has one love in his life: Movies. Specifically action movies, and even more specifically the Jack Slater series, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the titular cigar-smoking, gun-shooty, detective slash one man army himself. Danny loves Jack Slater movies so much that he abandons school, disobeys his mother, allowing their fucking apartment to get robbed at knifepoint, all so that he can get to an early screening of Jack Slater IV. So it should be a dream come true when a golden ticket given to Art Carney by Harry Houdini transports him into the Los Angeles of Jack Slater IV, a world of plot contrivances, blatant product placement, and cartoon cats. Which it is, for a while, until professional goon Benedict steals the ticket. Worse yet, he manages to use it to escape into the real world, forcing Jack and Danny to go after him. Jack always managed to catch the crook in the movies, but what about in real life? What happens when the predictable villain suddenly becomes genre-savvy? It’s something you’ve got to see for yourself.

     I came off as a bit cynical before, but truth be told I actually enjoyed Last Action Hero. Much in the same way that it took Wes Craven, a director who had a major influence in guiding the development of slasher movies, to properly deconstruct them in Scream, Last Action Hero takes the formula for action films and starts gleefully doodling in the margins. Sometimes it’s blatant, like Danny pointing out how every woman in town is ridiculously attractive or the perpetually angry black police chief who harangues the protagonists, and sometimes it’s more subtle, like how cars seem to have a natural tendency to flip, slide and careen into each other at the slightest provocation. It’s silly fun, and like other great satirical films, it works as the thing it’s satirizing. The huge, elaborate stunts, the catchy one-liners, the explosions, everything you might have seen in Die Hard and Lethal Weapon is in Last Action Hero, done with a careful eye by those who know action well, and dialed up to 11 to encompass the idea of action films. That’s really the main selling point of Last Action Hero, a gleeful exploration of outrageous action until the point of farce.

     We also see in Last Action Hero a film where Arnold Schwarzenegger attempts to tread the line between his action movie career and his comedy movie career, which had started as far back as 1988’s Twins and would continue on to 1996 with Jingle All the Way. Now I’m not going to say he proves all of his detractors wrong, because Arnie sounds too stiff even for action sometimes much less comedy, but honestly he pulls it off well here. Perhaps because a lot of the comedy in the film is playing to his strengths, which is being an action movie badass, and Arnie parodying himself. There’s a pretty great cast here, Art Carney, Tom Noonan, Austin O’Brien, but Last Action Hero lives or dies on the strength of Arnie’s performance.

     There are a couple issues here and there though. The runtime, clocking in at over two hours is a little rough. We do get a lot of fun set-pieces and comedy bits but at the same time it’s almost like we’re putzing around waiting for the proper plot to start. I’m also not a huge fan of Danny’s motivation throughout the movie, which starts off as him trying to get Slater to understand he’s a fictional character and become more self-aware, to getting annoyed at him actually developing some depth. There’s also supposed to be some sort of maturation subplot in there, with Danny becoming more brave, that I don’t think is properly explored.

     The biggest problem with Last Action Hero however, is the way it teases a far grander climax than the one we actually get. The bad guy has the ticket which can go into any movie and take fictional characters out of it into reality, even having the characters explicitly state that it’s possible, they have the bad guy circling movie showings of Dracula and Jason & the Argonauts, and when the time comes for the big confrontation, what happens? Benedict (our villain) brings back a grand total of one guy. Now granted that one guy has story significance, but it’s implied that he’s planning to do this with King Kong and fucking Hitler. So now I’m in a position where I’m imagining an ending where Jack Slater fights off an army of movie monsters and Nazis, and I’m stuck with this far less epic ending. So now my enjoyment of the movie is tainted, because I have to wonder what could have been. Not the best idea guys.

     Still I’m a sucker for anything with a hint of metafiction in it, and there’s plenty of thrills here for the people out there who aren’t me, so Last Action Hero gets the recommendation. It’s the kind of movie for people who love movies, to take a look at them structurally and maybe even seek them out for yourself (I know I still need to see Lethal Weapon 2). If you prefer your Halloween far less scary and more fantasy, this is the film for you.