MOVIE REVIEW: 'Rush Hour 3'


Movie review in the Friday, Aug. 10 Oregonian....




There seems to be an unwritten rule about action-movie franchises: The longer a franchise goes on, the more each new sequel feels like a TV-series episode.

The casts get bigger. The setups get shorter, The jokes get broader. Everything feels less epic. This is especially true of all the action series that kicked off in the '80s: "Die Hard" and "Predator" and "Alien" and the latter two's horribly commingled bastard children. (Heck, "The Terminator" actually is about to become a TV series.) By "Lethal Weapon 4," you're listening for the laugh track and looking for Stephen J. Cannell's name in the credits.

All of which leads us to "Rush Hour 3" -- which bypassed this dilemma entirely by feeling like a TV series from the get-go.

Maybe the best thing you can say about the third installment in director Brett Ratner's fish-out-of-water/buddy-cop series is that it's consistent. If you laughed at the first two, you'll laugh at this. It moves fast and delivers the "comedy" and action beats you'd expect, when you'd expect them, in less than 90 unchallenging minutes.

The story -- which is about as memorable as an 90-year-old's breakfast -- starts with an assassination attempt on the ambassador from the first “Rush Hour.” This leads to a hunt for the elusive secret name behind all Triad criminal activity. And that hunt takes Lee (Jackie Chan) and Carter (Chris Tucker) to France, where they're both fish out of water for a change, cutting a wide swath of vulgarity through Paris that includes a battle royale on pretty much every surface of the Eiffel Tower.

Oh, and it turns out Lee has an evil brother (Hiroyuki Sanada) who leaves you wondering if Lee's mother was having an affair with Benicio Del Toro. (You'll see what I mean.)

From here, "Rush Hour 3" is an exercise in critic-proofing: If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

Much of it is mind-blowingly stupid, like when Chan and Tucker get into a fight with an eight-foot-tall Chinese man for absolutely no reason other than that it looks funny. (This is immediately followed by a play on the old "Who's on First?" routine, this time with two gentlemen named Mr. Yu and Mr. Mi.) Some of it is actually pretty fun, as when our heroes convert a French cabbie (Yvan Attal) into a raging, bloodthirsty action-hero wannabe.

Jackie Chan brings it as hard as a 53-year-old man can bring it with the assistance of stunt doubles and digitally removed wires. Chris Tucker shrieks a number of off-color improvised remarks along the lines of telling Chan, “You can’t be black -- there’s a height requirement!” There are several gratuitous, in-your-face shots of women's behinds. And keeping us the derriere motif, Roman Polanski turns up as a Parisian cop prone to cavity searches. Jackie Chan jokes about renting porn. Jackie Chan jokes about soiling his pants. And there are moments of gay panic that make “Hot Fuzz” look positively butch by comparison.

In other words, it's pretty much business as usual.
_____

C; 90 minutes; rated PG-13 for sequences of action violence, sexual content, nudity and language.

'Rush Hour 3' (The Oregonian, Aug. 10, 2007)

Permalink


Posted: Fri - August 10, 2007 at 03:56 PM        

|

©