Rush Hour 3

Hahahahaha. Sorry, I was just thinking of the trailer for Superbad that preceded the movie. Unfortunately, that was the funniest part. Brett Ratner brings us the third installment of the Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker partnership. I honestly do not remember the premises of the first two movies. Something about Asian assassins I think? Maybe a crime syndicate or two? I dunno, I'm pretty sure that's what this is about anyway.

Of course Chan and Tucker reprise their perennial roles of detectives Lee and Carter to thwart yet another batch of crime lords- this time in Paris. This results in another rendition of the obligatory "Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth" line since they're dealing with a language neither of them know. This results in one of the few funny moments, when an elderly nun is interpreting insults between them and a suspect.

The other scene I actually enjoyed was an original car chase between a batch of motorcycles and a taxi. This was actually pretty exciting. The thrills and the humor take a break from the movie until the outtakes over the credits. The outtakes were actually pretty fun, since they show a lot of the stunts that go into the movie. As usual, Jackie Chan is very impressive, but it's still evident that he's getting older- he's in his 50's now. A lot of the stunts were green-screened in this movie. Oh well, even the best can't be jumping from building to building forever.

As for Chris Tucker, I'm pretty sure they could have taken footage of him from the first two, and simply edited it into this movie. I don't think there was a single original line of his in this outing. In fact, I'll bet he has enough canned phrases built up that he'll never actually have to work on another movie in his life. Must be nice to be that formulaic. In a completely odd twist, Roman Polanski had a supporting role in this. Roman Polanski?!

I'm prepared to put Ratner in the same league as Michael Bay now. Both of them make terrible, huge budget movies- though Bay still has the edge in the amount of money he can throw around. Almost everything each of these directors is gold at the box office, however. Rush Hour 3 is going to be no exception.

Watch the Trailer

1.5/5