Quick Review #96: City Hunter (movie)

Title: City Hunter / シティーハンター

Rating: 7 / 10

Recommended for: 

Those who want to watch a well-crafted action/suspense movie and are fans of Suzuki Ryohei but don't mind this for being too short and somewhat incomplete

* Disclaimer: I have not read the manga nor watched the prior anime versions.

Liked:

- The action scenes were definitely the highlight of this movie and Suzuki Ryohei absolutely nailed them with such style and made them look so effortless. 

- The suspense part of the story moved along speedily and complemented the action scenes pretty well.

- After watching this movie, you would probably be able to appreciate better why Suzuki won so many awards for his acting here. He's always been the type to fully immerse himself into the roles until the extent that you can't really pick up traces from his other roles. I thought that he managed to balance the wacky-lecherous side and serious-cool side of Saeba Ryo really well.

While Kimura Fumino didn't get a lot of scenes, she came across as really gorgeous, charming and cool which left a pretty deep impression on me. 

Disliked: 

- As the movie was less than 2 hours long, there were some parts of the story which inevitably wouldn't be covered. It felt like there was no head and no tail - head meaning the background story of Saeba and his buddy Makimura as well as their relationship with Nogami Saeko as well as how they came to be doing what they were doing and of course, the tail being a conclusive ending which then hints at more sequels potentially coming our way. The conclusion of the case itself was a tad underwhelming as it was apparent that the so-called culprit wasn't the mastermind and the final confrontation was rather meek as compared to how the story got to that point. In view of this, while I enjoyed the process, I wouldn't say that I was satisfied with the movie as a whole given that it was "incomplete" from the perspective of someone who knows little about the original material in the first place.

- Given the limited airtime, it was also inevitable that only Suzuki got to shine while the rest had very little room to work with. Maybe a prelude might be good or a full series would be sufficient to show the essence and charm of the original material in a better way and give the other characters a chance to make an impression on viewers.