Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/12/07
It's hard to remember after
almost ten years, but when Rush Hour arrived in the fall of 1998,
it was a breath of fresh air: an old-school buddy cop comedy with
a couple of exciting twists. Neither role was played by a white actor,
and the film provided the best ever showcases for motormouthed comedian
Chris Tucker and the US film career of martial arts legend Jackie Chan.
And most exciting of all, it was really, really good. Tucker and
Chan's characters were as sympathetic and relatable as they were funny,
and Jim Kouf and Ross LaManna's screenplay was above-average for a writing-challenged
genre. Three years later, director Brett Ratner reteamed with Tucker
and Chan on Rush Hour 2, a film just as funny and action-packed,
but also bloated and scattershot in that way that summer sequels tend to
be. It, however, looks like Lethal Weapon when compared with
the hopelessly shoddy threequel the trio has delivered after a six-year
hiatus. Rush Hour 3 is virtually action-free, shot like a
old episode of Mannix and dragged down by a Chris Tucker performance so
out of character he'd might as well be wearing a T-Shirt that reads “Hi,
I'm Chris Tucker and I used to play Detective James Carter”. Yet
Tucker and Chan still wield formidable chemistry and the movie works so
hard to be fun that it's not nearly as awful as the sum of its' defective
parts.
Carter (Tucker) and Lee (Chan)
are on the outs over something that happened three years ago. While
Lee remains in an important position as bodyguard to Ambassador Han (Tzi
Ma), Carter's been demoted to traffic duty. Still, he keeps trying
to mend fences with his old friend and leaps back into action when there's
an attempt on Han's life at the World Court just as he's about to announce
the identity of the legendary leader of the Chinese Triad. Lee begins
his investigation as Carter tags along (I guess he correctly assumes that
it's not a Rush Hour sequel without him). The trail leads
to Paris and an assortment of shady characters including showgirl Genevieve
(Noemie Lenoir), World Court leader Varden Reynard (Max von Sydow) and
Kenji (Hiroyuki Sanada), a crime boss with a secret link to Lee's past.
At least they've got one man on their side: Parisian cabbie George
(Yvan Attal), who yearns “to kill for no reason” just like an American.
For old time's sake, I'll
start with what I liked about Rush Hour 3. George is a funny
and original comic creation, and Attal puts a lot of spunk into the role.
And even as Jackie Chan ages and his stuntwork becomes necessarily less
ambitious, it's still fun to watch the grace he brings to it, and he continues
to play Lee with the same confident professionalism he always delivers.
And an early visit to a Kung Fu class where Carter and Lee battle a giant
(Sun Ming Ming) and engage in funny wordplay with a couple of guys named
Yu and Mi suggests that the movie is about to regain its' bearings.
Throughout, about every 4th one of Tucker's improv lines is actually funny,
and he and Chan still make a good comic team.
But, alas, Rush Hour 3
feels like the duo and their much-maligned director have done this about
15 times before. Tucker, whose performance in RH1 was actually quite
good, is nothing but a quip machine now, and you can just feel Ratner calling
for take after take as he tries out every improv he can think of.
Sometimes they strike gold, but more often they paint the once courageous
cop as a racist, misogynistic, homicidal loser. It's tough to start
a movie with a scene where your lead character wackily blackmails a couple
of women into going on a date with the threat of an arrest and then follow
it with a scene where his Captain (an exhausted-looking Philip Baker Hall)
chews him out for arresting Iranian doctors because he thinks they “might
blow something up”. Gotta love that Carter! I can only assume
that the incident that caused his falling-out with Lee also lead to serious
brain damage.
For his part, Ratner directs
like he was cashing a paycheck on a 70's cop show, artlessly pointing the
camera at his actors and hoping they say something funny. For a new
installment in such a popular franchise, it seems ridiculously cheap, more
Money Talks 2 than Rush Hour 3. What little action
occurs, mostly at the end, is neither as elaborate or exciting as anything
in its' predecessors, and a couple of car chases earlier in the movie have
no zing. The “story” offered by Jeff Nathanson's screenplay is little
but a clothesline to hang silly gags on, and what plot does emerge is absolute
nonsense. In particular, watch the knots the explanation of Lee and
Kenji's relationship ties itself into trying to sound like something really
important without forcing Lee to actually go out on an ethical limb (I
could just imagine Chan sending back draft after draft of the script with
the note “Try again-this time make Kenji even LESS related to Lee” scribbled
on it). The connection between the various conspirators and the revelations
about the identity of that Triad leader are at best hard to follow (it
helps to have the kind of brain that fills in the plot developments of
other movies when the one you're watching doesn't have any). As in
RH2, it's funny to watch how the story actually gives Chan a plot, relationships,
backstory, etc. while Tucker's content to just stand around and wait for
his next chance to sing (as in a nightclub sequence that is utterly awful).
It's been a few years since
I last saw the original Rush Hour, and I remember reflecting upon
how much more engaged and in-character the actors and filmmakers were than
in its' lazy sequel. But the drop from RH2 to RH3 is even more substantial.
I fear that if there's a Rush Hour 4, Chris Tucker will spend most
of the movie on his couch in a bathrobe while Jackie Chan occasionally
runs through the living room fighting someone with Carter's TV tray and
babbling something about how the leader of the Triad has turned out to
be his Great-Uncle's milkman. And even then, they'll probably be
good for a laugh or two. Such is both the gift and the curse of the
Rush Hour franchise, and both are on abundant display in Rush
Hour 3. Do yourself a favor and pull the original off your DVD
shelf instead. |
