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'Rush Hours 3' movie review |
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Written by Rick Bentley, MCT
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Wednesday, 08 August 2007 |
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RUSH HOUR 3
C-
Rating: PG-13 for language, partial nudity, violence.
Starring: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Max Von Sydow.
Director: Brett Ratner.
Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.
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"Rush Hour" has gone from being a likeable buddy franchise to an annoying series that has all the depth of a bad comic book. "Rush Hour 3" has two-dimensional characters who go from scene to scene with little regard for what happens in-between. All that is missing from this film is a big splashy "POW" or "THWAP" when one of the bad guys gets hit.
What passes as a plot has Chief Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) on the trail of a mysterious list that can identify the leaders of the infamous Chinese Triad.
In this kind of film, no one is expected to act normal. That's why the two detectives can take off for Paris without authorization or support. They are the good guys. They can do no wrong.
This is when the movie turns into an American nightmare in Paris.
The detectives are greeted at the airport gate by a French detective, played with zombie-like enthusiasm by Roman Polanski, who proceeds to beat and torture his American counterparts. Why? He doesn't want American detectives in his country. He must have seen the rest of the movie.
The anti-American sentiment continues when Lee and Carter force a Parisian cabbie to be their driver. The cabbie eventually tells the American detectives that he wants to brutally kill someone so that he can feel like an American.
This kind of dialogue might have worked in a political thriller. It has no place in such a lightweight comedy. How the scenario plays out is even more appalling.
All of this gets magnified because Tucker has gone from being the comic relief in a buddy action movie to being a comedian so out of control the audience will be looking for relief. There is not five minutes in the entire film when Tucker's character says anything but a comic quip. He's bought a "Joke of the Minute" book and uses it.
Chan gets a few scenes to show he still has the skill to handle elaborate stunts. The problem is Brett Ratner's direction of the Chan fight scenes does not have a heart-stopping tempo. Slowing the action down makes it all look like a paint-by-numbers stunt show.
It might have helped if the script didn't have so many gapping holes. Then there is the problem that some of the bad guys are so obvious it is as if they were wearing a T-shirt with the word "VILLAIN" across the front. Other characters are bad, but it is never clear who they work for. There is at least one character who just seems caught in a movie villain purgatory between good and evil.
The first "Rush Hour" was entertaining. The second was annoying. "Rush Hour 3" is just a waste of time and talent. It's so bad that even the bloopers at the end of the movie aren't funny.
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