City Hunter (2024), review – Netflix presents a silly and enjoyable buddy movie that proves (once again) that not all anime work in live action

Netflix has been biting and biting with live-action remakes for some time now, and the Japanese series ‘Yu Yu Hakusho’ has worked quite well for them considering that adapting an anime like this is not easy.

His next project from Japan is a ‘City Hunter’ film, based on the iconic manga by Tsukasa Hojo but setting the story in 2024 and trying to strike gold with a new detective franchise.

Not so much nor so bald

‘City Hunter’ It is a police manga that mixes its points of action and comedy and whose protagonist is a somewhat outdated detective named Ryo Saeba. And like the manga, the Netflix film directed by Yuichi Sato and starring Ryohei Suzuki begins when Ryo’s partner is murdered.

This is when it comes into the picture Kaori, the sister of his former partner Hideyuki, who recruits Ryo to try to find her older brother’s murderer. Now, in the midst of all this, the two begin to investigate the disappearance of a young influencer and her connection to a strange drug that has recently appeared in Tokyo.

The film follows a fairly similar plot to the original manga and anime, and’City Hunter’ leaves us with a kind of very filthy buddy movie with Ryo and Kaori learning to work together and adjust to each other’s ways.

Now, some of the elements that make the original manga so iconic, such as the balance between stupid and slightly dirty humor and cool action… They don’t end up curdling so well by taking them to a live action movie.

Especially Ryo’s most slimy and womanizing side ends up being quite stale and tired, so when ‘City Hunter’ tries to sell you that the guy is actually a machine, it doesn’t completely convince you. And the same thing happens with the most serious moments that should make us feel that everything is in danger… Well, it’s neither fu nor fa at all because you never notice that the bets are life or death.

Is a comedy very Japanese, with its excesses and its own conventions. So if we are not used to this type of cinema it can get really messy. And also, unfortunately, it leaves you with the aftertaste that all this humor of exaggerated screams, bouncing tits and giant hammer blows would have worked in horror in anime instead of in live action.

Of course, when ‘City Hunter’ takes itself more seriously and goes all out with its police thriller side, it leaves us with several very well-executed action-packed moments. Except that they are late to arrive and they are left unbalanced by a plot that has a hard time getting started and that tries to cover too much.

Per se ‘City Hunter‘It’s very enjoyable, especially if you enter the game and accept the characters as they are without beating them too much. It’s a movie that would work much better in anime, but it leaves us an intriguing police investigation and characters with a lot of chemistry which could have plenty of potential for a small franchise if Netflix manages to find a good balance for the tone.

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