Written by Nick Da Costa | Sunday, November 30, 2008 | Comment on this article | + Share
We have a lot to thank Hollywood for. Surely their unspoken deal with Chris Tucker to keep him locked away until it’s deemed necessary to make another in the now failing ‘Rush Hour‘ franchise has saved both the audience’s ears and eyes from overexposure to his hysterical and spastic performances. With ‘Rush Hour 3‘, there truly is no escape.
It’s astonishing to think that a group of studio execs finds this man funny enough to still be constructing a movie around him. And that’s really the level of filmmaking going on here. Taking the worst elements of the previous two films, the mindless misogyny, lazy racial stereotypes and slapping on a plot that barely makes sense let alone lasts a standard running time.
What’s worse, the filmmakers are so confident that nobody will care whether the story about the selection of the next Triad leader and the attempted assassination of Chan’s friend, the Chinese Ambassador makes sense that they throw in plot contrivances seemingly at random; a clichéd French cabby transformed into a last minute saviour being the worst. Anything to keep the plucky duo out of harms way and back into another ego-driven skit about what a pimp Tucker is.
Alas, though the law of diminishing returns ensures this will never be as good as the first two entries in the series, this has always been a poor mans ‘Lethal Weapon‘, falling short of the anarchic humour, buddy dynamics or truly exhilarating action sequences. And while the ‘Lethal Weapon’ films were hardly the height of realism, at least there was some sense of danger, an understanding of the violence inherent in such pursuits. In ‘Rush Hour 3′ all logic has taken a back seat, switching from overly cute choreographed sequences in mysteriously empty hospitals, hotels or an unguarded Eiffel Tower to sluggish and uninvolving acrobatics from Chan who has become little more than a broken Buster Keaton.
And that’s really the saddest testament to the franchises declining powers. That one of the most exciting and energetic performers in cinema is reduced to this; playing second fiddle to an obnoxious second rate movie star. Even though Chan still looks in better shape than the plump Tucker, there are moments where the edit seems to be hiding what in the earlier films left brilliantly exposed in wide shot. Hopefully, he still has some great movies in him, but it’s certainly not in dirge like this, especially when a film listed as a comedy, has its funniest moments in the outtakes after the feature has finished.
