"Rush Hour 3" (2007) - Movie Review

I grew up with Jackie Chan movies. Not the Hollywood ones but the dear old and authentic classy sweetly cleverish stunts of his more than a dozen Chinese movies. We never cared for the plot and I do not remember any of it either. Generally it will be an avenging story or finding some or whatever. It is enough to say that I like Jackie Chan. And this is the first movie of his to be reviewed by me and it kills me to give a negative review.

This is the third installment from the “Rush Hour” franchise. The first one was fun when the character got introduced and the routine buddy cop movie was well executed. For those who missed the two movies, Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) and Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) are who kicks, rushes and continuously enters the accidental and risky scenario with a foolishness just enough to entertain and to escape. In “Rush Hour 3” all the things go away with only “foolishness” standing alone failing every sequence possible.

Lee arrive body guarding Consul Han (Tzi Ma) to the World Criminal Court in Los Angeles. Carter on the other hand gets introduced singing and dancing quite funnily in the middle of a busy traffic filled junction of LA. We realize he is assisting in trafficking listening to iPod. When this is happening, Consul Han comes to the open stage with nice view for any one to be targeted. It is in a high building with a direct bird’s eye view from another tower. They set the stage to ask some one to take a sniper shot. Hence you know the usual. Some one shoots Consul Han and then Lee chases. He corners him and the assassin seems to be known to Lee. It is his brother Kenji (Hiroyuki Sanada). And he escapes (duh!). This is the first ten minutes and I already start to get the vibe of something missing out here. Jackie’s stunts are not impressive enough. It is not that he is old and not able to create the comical stunts he does usually. He does couple of extreme agile moves but the trademark Jackie improvising funny element is totally missing out.
And I forgot to mention that Consul Han “survives” since the bullet did not pass through the heart. So? First they make the assassin stupid enough to aim his chest than head. When do assassins in movie learn? I guess when director does not bend and break the content for mere star presence and some very bad crude race/sex humour. Brett Ratner is way off the mark on this one.

There are particularly two funny sequences I laughed. One of course the introduction of Carter dancing in the middle of a busy road and the second one is once they get beat up in the Kung Fu school, the conversation between the master and Carter is terrifically funny. Rest of it is mean, harsh, dry and crude. The scene involving interrogation of French speaking Chinese guy with the assistance of a Nun, the cab driver George (Yvan Attal) on Americans, Carter in the dressing room of performers in the club are all one badly written/acted/executed “comedy”.

When “Rush Hour” or “Rush Hour 2” comes over in some channel, I sit and watch it for a while. You know it is the kind of movie wherein you can kill time with decent entertainment. Both movies were funny. The chemistry work well in this movie for both the lead actors as it worked in the previous two installments. The problem emerges when we start to see Tucker and Chan instead of Carter and Lee. It is not that they had well defined in depth character roll in previous installments, but some of slightest signs of them are missing.

Looking back in the movie, everything is adjusted in screenplay for convenience. So adjusting lots of thing in a formula story with many plots, add further more plot holes. Plot is nothing out here. They wanted Chan and Tucker to be paired because it seems at the set they have lots of fun. They show the bloopers when the credits roll as they did for the previous movies. In the first and second, there will be lot of stunts which went wrong and hurt Jackie. And then it had some tongue twisting funny dialogue mishaps. In “Rush Hour 3”, even the bloopers are bad. There are one or two stunt mishaps because there were one or two stunts. Then the funny dialogue delivering mess ups are not funny. Two things should have happened; Jackie should have done couple of more decent authentic trademark stunts of his with humour than acrobatics. Second, stop making jokes which are not jokes any more when it starts to appear more serious. I know Jackie has it in him to do those stunts in his upcoming movies.