Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Nicky Larson is tasked to recover the perfume of Cupid, a perfume that would make anyone who uses it irresistible.
This French live-action adaptation of the Japanese manga City Hunter (known as Nicky Larson in France) is a loving tribute to the source material, leaning heavily into nostalgia and affectionate parody. The plot is a fairly thin MacGuffin chase — recovering Cupid's Perfume — that serves mostly as scaffolding for gags and action set pieces rather than genuine dramatic stakes. Philippe Lacheau brings comic energy and physical commitment to the womanizing Nicky/Ryo role, and the ensemble cast handles the broad comedy well enough. Cinematography is competent and colorful but unremarkable. The novelty comes from its unusually faithful and self-aware homage to 80s manga aesthetics transplanted into a French comedy context, which is a genuinely distinctive cultural mashup. The ending resolves predictably without much surprise or punch.