By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
Rush Hour 3 feels as desperate and static as being trapped in a traffic jam. The final, and anti-climactic, "threequel" of the summer has nothing new to say. A staleness pervades the film, despite all efforts to inject freshness and excitement into a tired story.
Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker reprise their roles as buddy cops, first introduced nearly a decade ago with the first Rush Hour. Chan has a consistently engaging presence, and his stunts are still impressive. Tucker has a few funny moments, but his jokes are often predictable and his one-liners obvious. The two have a limited, tenuous chemistry.
The movie's several chase scenes are slickly produced but lack originality. There is a bloodlessness to the proceedings that makes you wonder why anyone bothered.
The story is fairly ludicrous. The unlikely pair of LAPD detectives team up to stop a secret crime syndicate called The Triads. When Lee (Chan) is assigned to provide security for the Chinese ambassador, he is inadvertently drawn into a much more complex global conspiracy.
He promises the ambassador's daughter (Jingchu Zhang) that he will find the men who are threatening her father. Carter (Tucker) refuses to let him go it alone. A brief detour at a martial-arts school results in some over-the-top physical humor involving the 7-foot-9 Chinese basketball star Sun Ming Ming and a silly variation of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" gag.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Paris | Lee | New Line Cinema | Cops | Rush Hour | Jackie Chan | Chris Tucker
Lee and Carter arrive in Paris and are interrogated, beaten and subjected to an invasive search by the head of French police (Roman Polanski, in a mystifying casting choice). They meet a disdainful taxi driver (filmmaker Yvan Attal) who initially will serve only to stir anti-Gallic and xenophobic sentiments among some viewers.
When the cabbie is drawn into the car-chase game, things take a different turn, and audiences will likely regard him differently. Max Von Sydow has a small but key part as the head of the World Criminal Court. Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai) plays a one-dimensional bad guy, and Noémie Lenoir gives a similarly one-note performance as a mysterious dancer with a secret.
Paris seems to be the location of choice for summer movies this year. Besides Rush Hour 3, there has been Ratatouille, Paris, Je t'Aime, Angel-A and 2Days in Paris.
What is most impressive from the glut of movies set in the French metropolis is the sight of the Eiffel Tower at night, and Chan and company vaulting off its heights and dangling from its edges. The inadvertent humor in the final outtakes is far funnier than the script.
Paris may be hot, but this franchise has worn thin.
3 comments:
Quel suprise indeed.
Now that he lives in LA maybe Octo can find Chris Tucker and console him on his crappy movie.
I've got better things to do...I just put up my wall shelves for my Lego creations.
I'm not usually a fan of this reviewer but this is a perfect description of this whole franchise: "There is a bloodlessness to the proceedings that makes you wonder why anyone bothered."
Always good to see Roman Polanski and Max von Sydow getting work, however.
I'll still rent it. I'm not expecting the Godfather.
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