In the third Scream movie, Jaime Kennedy gives the rules of being part of a trilogy and one of the rules is that this time around things are personal. Apparently that goes beyond just horror movies because if you look back you will find a few action movies that carry that same mantra and Rush Hour is no different. However, before you even get into that you have to ponder the question as to whether a third Rush Hour movie, especially 6 years after Rush Hour 2. Typically these buddy type movies run out of steam after one sequel and when they go longer (see Lethal Weapon)they end up diminishing how much you enjoyed the first one or even the first two. Of course, these are Rush Hour movies, so what is the big deal. I mean these movies have always known what they were and never tried to go above and beyond your escapism cinema. We knew Jackie Chan would bounce off walls and use couches to fight and we knew Chris Tucker would run his mouth and say something funny every little while and that the two guys would do a little dance.
The movie picks up 6 years after the last adventure we had with these guys. James Carter (Tucker) has been stripped of detective duty and is on the street controlling parking. He has his ipod on and is singing to prince while doing his usual Michael Jackson dance routine and not paying attention so cars start crashing into each other. Lee (Chan) is back on duty being the bodyguard for the Chinese ambassador and they are traveling to the "world Court" to introduce something that could change the world. Carter and Lee has not spoken in a few years because Carter accidentally shot Lee's girlfriend (she didn't die and they use it as a joke later). The ambassador is shot down by an assassin at the conference and when Carter hears about it he takes off for the court. Our first chase moment is Lee chasing down the would be assassin (The ambassador doesn't die)through a busy freeway in Los Angeles and in a moment that would make Jaime Kennedy happy, the assassin turns out to be... Lee's brother! Lee cannot bring himself to kill him and he escapes, but this puts Lee and Carter back together because Soo Yung (the kidnapped girl from the first movie) makes the two promise to find out who tried to kill her dad. They end up in Paris searching for the leader of the Triad and in Pairs their usual antics continue. The sing a little bit, fight some, and argue. Also a bald woman shows up to lend some really bad gay jokes to Carter.
The things that made the first two movies work were the chemistry between the two and also the action to joke ratio was pretty good. This movie is exactly the same as the first two, but it is no longer very interesting or funny. The action scene in the hospital hearkens to the first two, combining good gun action and jokes and the final showdown in the Eiffel Tower is a lot of fun, if incredibly unlikely, but other than that this movie falls incredibly flat. A lot of Asian jokes, a Brokeback joke and a white nun being "down" are what this pins its hope on and they all seem to fall flat. Chris Tucker, a man I have always found to be very funny, appears to have run out gas and jokes because most of the time he is just obnoxious here. He hasn't made a single movie since Rush Hour two and maybe he is not meant to be a movie star. Jackie Chan is getting old and has apparently run out of stunts because I am fairly certain if you watched Rush hour 2 and 3 back to back you would find a lot of similar stunts, especially ones involving a love seat. Of course there is someone in higher power who turns out to be bad and if you are paying any attention at all you will figure it out about 15 minutes in, but again that doesn't really matter to these movies.
If I were to find all the good stuff about this movie I would start with the 90 minute run time. This movie hits the ground running and doesn't stop for things like character development and story, who needs those things when you have Chris Tucker trying to fight a guy who stand about 8 feet tall!?! Also, the typical scene where Tucker and Chan have a fight and wander the streets alone while some very corny song plays, does not disappoint as Tucker ends up eating Asian food and Chan eats some fried chicken, yes fried chicken! Homophobia and racism be damned here. The director of this mess is Bret Ratner, the man charged with ruining X-men and in fact charged with ruining cinema itself with his bad movies. I have never had a problem with his movies. I mean I love the first two installments of this franchise but a third one just seems pointless.
with the exception of the classic trilogy- needing 3 movies to tell one single story-movie franchises that go further than 2 tend to have at least one of the movies be of a lesser quality than the other two. Sometimes the third one is created to make up for a bad second one- Ocean's and Indiana Jones- or they have a bad third leg- Ninja turtles and Back to the future and now Rush Hour. I know these movies are just supposed to help us make it through the end of summer blues as school creeps up, but is it too much to ask that the jokes be new or that the action look interesting? The movie underperformed this weekend compared to the last installment so hopefully we will be spared the Lethal Weapon curse of making a fourth one because I doubt I will need any more jokes from Chris Tucker about turning Asian people into California rolls.
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