And strangely, no catchy subtitle. But Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker are back, after six years, and Hollywood’s hoping to make lots of money off of them once again. Originally the talk was that they’d film Rush Hour 3 and 4 together, but that didn’t materialize, and perhaps that’s for the best. For one thing, there was barely enough plot around for even one little hour and a half film.
That’s traditional in the Rush Hour flicks, of course — they’re just meant to spoof the buddy cop films, and have lots of action and comedy, and only enough plot to get you to the next wild stunt. This time the plot’s even thinner, though, and I suspect some of it got left on the cutting room floor because they wanted to make sure the film would later fit nicely into a two-hour time slot on network television.
Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma, reprising his role from the first film) is in Los Angeles to address a meeting of the World Criminal Court on the problem of the Triad, the villainous group from Movie 2 now making a comeback here. Han has asked Inspector Lee (Jackie, of course) to act as bodyguard for him, as he is about to reveal the truth behind the Triad’s shadowy leader. But a sniper’s bullet knocks Han down just before he can reveal this vital information (of course), and the chase is on, as Jackie races after the would-be assassin and is nearly killed by James Carter (Chris Tucker), who is trying to rush to his aid.
Now, I know Chris Tucker’s supposed to go over the top. It worked in the first movie, and worked even better (I think) in the second one, when everyone kind of hit their stride. But here, it really just got painful sometimes. Our first look at him is directing traffic at a busy intersection while grooving to the song playing on his iPod, and you can imagine how well that works out. I felt like I was watching a musical sometimes, there was so much singing and dancing. And just in case anyone with any actual Hollywood influence is reading this, don’t ever make Jackie sing again. Please. Especially not another love song with Chris Tucker.
Anyway, since poor Ambassador Han is apparently in a coma or something (they don’t say, but he is alive and they work on the assumption that he won’t be able to tell them anything for the rest of the movie), the boys make one of their bizarre intuitive leaps based on almost nothing that turns out to lead them to exactly the right place, just like the first two times. So they end up in Paris, trashing the City of Lights. You can tell it’s Paris because every window has a nice view of the Eiffel Tower.
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| Chan and Tucker realize that all roads in Paris really do lead to the Eiffel Tower. |
They discover that a woman named Genevieve (the gorgeous Noémie Lenoir, a French supermodel who turns out to be a pretty good actor, too) is the person who originally gave Han the information, and they track her down to a burlesque show. Yep, more singing and dancing, but at least these girls are professionals. You can tell it’s still Paris because they play the can-can a lot during the show.
They get the girl, are predictably betrayed by someone they trusted, and race all over the city, managing to turn a mild-mannered French cab driver (George, played by Yvan Attal, who I liked a lot) into something of a monster along the way. George’s scenes were probably the best, now that I think about it. They should have had more of him. Also, Gérard Depardieu’s daughter Julie plays George’s wife in what must have been a fun little part. Other notables include Max von Sydow as some kind of French consul or something, and Roman Polanski as a police detective, only I didn’t realize who he was until I got home and read it online.
Han’s daughter is back — different actress, of course, and all grown up now, but sadly she doesn’t get much of a part. The strong and scary female role this time goes to Youki Kudoh (Memoirs of a Geisha), who is actually listed as Dragon Lady, and lives up to that title. The fight scenes are pretty good — very much like the fights from the first two, but that was okay, because I liked those fights. And elsewhere, like I said, a lot of the old spark just isn’t there. Carter has at last learned a little about how to fight hand-to-hand instead of just shooting everything, which was nice to see, but the stories of what he’s supposedly been doing since the last movie were just silly. And he has the attention span of a hyper two year old — I know he wasn’t exactly focused before, but here I was wondering how he manages to make it through the day without forgetting to breathe because the pretty girls are distracting him so much.
So two and three-quarter idols for this one. I just couldn’t bring myself to go up to three, not even to match the title. They even rewrote Lee’s backstory a little, which felt odd. Those retroactive changes usually don’t work out well. It still isn’t bad to see in the theatre, though, if only for the last fight scene. It’s set on the Eiffel Tower (of course, this is Paris), but this was the one place where I was really drawn in to what was happening, even though it made me dizzy. And don’t forget to watch the end credits, where they hide the bloopers. They’re also not quite as good as the first two sets of outtakes, but you might as well get all the laughs you can out of it.