Rush Hour 3 - Review

The Eiffel Tower does not have a bad angle. In 1998's Rush Hour, Jackie Chan was the Hong Kong cop thrust out of his comfort zone in L.A., but finding a buddy in local fuzz Chris Tucker. Three years later, it was Tucker's turn to be the stranger in a strange land when he re-teamed with Chan for Rush Hour 2. Rush Hour 3 begins in L.A., but quickly moves to Paris, making both men fish out of water for their first outing in six years. That does not make this lame buddy comedy twice as funny, as most of the humor is dead on arrival, but at least the action climaxes on the famed Parisian landmark. It will take your breath away in a good way, even if paying $10 or so for a movie ticket to see this mediocrity leaves you feeling sucker punched.

There are a few bright spots. Chan's acrobatics are as fun to watch as ever, if not quite as daring as they were in his youth. Tucker lands the occasional joke, in particular in one scene where he riffs off the old Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on First?" with instructors at a karate academy. But the franchise is definitely showing its age and this seems more like an attempt to cash in on the first two movies' popularity than an honest attempt (however failed) to reinvigorate it.

Lee (Chan) and Carter (Tucker) reunite to chase after the elusive Shy Shen, a notorious figure associated with the Asian criminal gang, the Triads. Their only clues are an address and a name, "Genevieve," and there are any number of Triad associates determined to stop them, including Kenji (Hiroyuki Sanada), Lee's foster brother turned assassin. It is a dangerous situation and only grows more so, once they meet Genevieve (Noemie Lenoir), and discover that she has been targeted for death.

Like Rush Hour 2, the new sequel was written by Jeff Nathanson, who displays none of the skill that earned him a BAFTA nomination for his work on Catch Me if You Can. Instead, he seems to be reverting back to the bad old days of Speed 2: Cruise Control, the legendary bomb that earned him a Razzie nod. How much he is to blame for this nonsense is debatable, since director Brett Ratner appears to embrace every improvisation, no matter how weak, and does not seem to subscribe to the theory that his movies need to make sense just so long as he keeps things moving.

None of that would matter, of course, if the jokes were funnier and the action less thoroughly predictable. The scenes on the Eiffel Tower have a certain panache, but the rest is just action movie cliché. Legendary auteur Roman Polanski pathetically appears in a throwaway cameo as a French cop, while My Wife is an Actress director Yvan Attal no doubt earned a chunk of his next film's budget in the idiotic role of an anti-American French cabbie who learns to embrace all-American violence thanks to new pals Carter and Lee. Rush Hour 3 is just sad, but what is sadder still is the certainty that there will be a Rush Hour 4.