Movie Review: Rush Hour 3
Six years after Rush Hour 2 hit, the new sequel finally arrives, and perhaps just in time for the careers of Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, and director Brett Ratner. Since 2001, Chan has had only a couple of recognizable movies and Tucker has been AWOL (his last three films have all been in the Rush Hour series). Ratner slowly became the new Michael Bay (critical whipping boy) with movies like Red Dragon, After the Sunset, and the much-maligned X-Men 3.
Inspector Lee (Chan) and Detective James Carter (Tucker) once again find themselves doing out-of-the-department police work when Consul Han (Tzi Ma) is shot and critically wounded. They vow to his now grown-up daughter Soo Yung (Jingchu Zhang, taking over from Julia Hsu from the first movie) that they will find who did this. It turns out to be someone from Lee’s past, Kenji (Hiroyuki Sanada), who is a part of a secret organization that many politicians don’t believe exist.
The investigation leads them to France, and they get help from Varden Reynard (Max von Sydow: I don’t think it’s spoiling the plot to tell you that Sydow is always a bad guy in these types of movies, and just look at his character name, which means “fox”) and a woman named Genevieve (Noemie Lenoir), who holds a secret that the gang wants to kill her for.
Surprisingly, despite bad dialogue and some more stupid stuff (a finale on the Eiffel Tower is both exciting and dumb: how in the world do gangsters make the Eiffel Tower their home base for criminal activity?), this movie is much better than the previous two entries. Jackie Chan, at 53, can still move and he has some fun action scenes here, and Chris Tucker is pretty funny for the most part. But stealing the show is French cab driver George (Yvan Attal), who can’t stand Americans and their violent ways but soon gets turned around for quite a comedic effect.
So: good action, good laughs, still stupid in many ways. It’s a summer blockbuster, what can I say. And I enjoyed it. I’m sure there will be many critics who disagree, but that’s the way it goes.
Follows: Rush Hour 2
Comments
Comment from The Projectionist
Time: August 10, 2007, 1:50 pm
No, I believe they rescued that certain someone, if we’re talking about the same person. Even if we aren’t, remember I still think the movie is pretty stupid so there are a lot of things that are just shruggers. Hey, I can have a guilty pleasure now and then.
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Comment from Brandon
Time: August 10, 2007, 6:57 am
I am dissappointed in you. I was shuffling around in my seat and checking my watch the whole way through this one. I don’t want to give any spoilers away on your site, but what the fuck was up with the ending? Is it me or did they forget to rescue a certain someone who is still at a certain location with some certain machine gun-toting bad guys?