Maybe the worst thing about Rush Hour 3 is that it’s not completely and offensively bad. Bad movies, we can laugh and point at. This mediocrity, should you choose to go see it, will just blend into obscurity the moment you arrive home; then you’ll find yourself crawling on the kitchen floor wondering where you lost your $10.50. This is the kind of movie that was being mass-produced, like superhero movies are now, back in the mid-to-late 90’s, in the second coming period of the buddy cop genre. The same year of the first Rush Hour, we got Lethal Weapon 4, which was pretty much the final nail of it all.
Just like that one, Rush Hour 3 comes in way too late, overestimating its welcome. Never mind that the trend of this kind of thing has sailed away, but why make it at all, after a six-year hiatus? The first Rush Hour was popular, but not exactly what leaps to mind when you think brand name. Is there an Inspector Lee and Detective Carter convention somewhere I don’t know about? Who buys the Chris Tucker lunchboxes?
It’s an obvious easy-cash rake, easy-make film, so the entire thing is just one lazy production. It takes the same premise and the same villains, then dumps them in Paris for no specific reason. You see, the bad guys here are still Chinese gangsters (sort of, their leader is Japanese… kinda—more on that later), but their base of operation is in France. Why? Because without so, there would be no geographical justification behind the many easy cheap shots being made at the French’s expense. Emphasis on easy here. Politically incorrect humor can be great, but not when it’s got nothing new to offer. By now, black people eating fried chicken and fat girl jokes are already stereotypes of stereotype humor themselves.
The plot this time is that Lee (Jackie Chan) and Carter (Chris Tucker) have to go to France in pursuit of someone or something mysterious and ancient before the Triad does.
Speaking of ancient, there’s an embarrassing re-do of the classic “Who’s On First?” routine that involves two Chinese men named Mi and Yu (see if you can follow the wit here). Its execution is competent enough, but it’s just not that funny because it’s not very original—the same can be said about the entire movie—since not only Abbott and Costello did it first and better, but I did also, almost verbatim in the way Rush Hour 3 did it, back in… let’s see… 4th grade, I believe. It’s almost as embarrassing as Roman Polanski’s cameo as an anal prober.
Lee now has a retconned Japanese “brother” named Kenji (Hiroyuki Sanada), a Triad boss who’s hands-on with his assassinations, thus how we get Kenji and Lee’s first encounter in the film. It’s a little confusing why Kenji, orphaned by Yakuza in Tokyo as a child, was sent to an orphanage in Hong Kong. Equally confusing why Lee learned Japanese to speak to Kenji when it should be the other way around, living in Hong Kong and all… but when you’ve got a great actor like Sanada, you make up whatever to justify him being there.
It was reported that this sequel was delayed because Chris Tucker demanded creative control, which probably explains the odd decisions in the film, like the move to make Carter a black belt and giving him the good fights at the end. Isn’t that why you hire Jackie Chan? I thought the premise is that the kung fu maestro teams up with the incompetent loudmouth. Seems like self-sabotage here, because Chan isn’t given much to do. At least Rush Hour 1 and 2 had entertaining fight numbers that are Jackie Chan’s calling card—with lots of acrobatics, props, and dozens of henchmen. Here he’s demoted to boringly brief fights. The climax involves him engaging in a one-on-one swordfight, as if we haven’t endured an abundance of those since Kill Bill came out. Even Chris Tucker, who hasn’t been in any movie since the last Rush Hour, seems to have lost his touch in the past six years. His comic timing is terrible, overshadowed by his attempts to look cool and steal the show from Jackie during the action scenes.
The second one was nothing more than a repeat of the first one, and this one has no other ambition than to do just that: Repeating. Except it doesn’t do so as competently, so you have an inferior version of the second movie. It’d be dandy if I can just tell you that if you liked the previous two you’ll like this one. While that may be true, why are you watching these movies? Is it for the story, or for the action and laughs? If it’s the latter, it’s much cheaper to just rent the first one again.
"Rush Hour 3" opens August 10, 2007 and is rated PG13. Action, Comedy. Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Jeff Nathanson. Starring Jackie Chan, Max Von Sydow, Chris Tucker, Noemie Lenoir, Hiroyuki Sanada.
