Rush Hour

Staring: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Tom Wilkinson, Elizabeth Pea, Philip Baker Hall, Mark Rolston, Tzi Ma, Rex Linn, Ken Leung, Chris Penn, Julia Hsu, Stanley DeSantis, Kevin L. Jackson, Manny Perry

Review by The Ranting WolfCastle

    I've never been a big fan of Jackie Chan, what he can do is extraordinary, but I've never like his movies very much.  I do like Chris Tucker however.  I know many people think he's annoying, and in films like The Fifth Element he is pretty annoying.  But he's damn funny.  Whoever thought to team these two up is weird, they aren't opposites, and they aren't alike at all.   They're just different.

    Here's an ultra shortened plot synopsis just because the film really lacks creativity.  A Los Angeles police officer, and a Hong Kong police officer team up to save a kidnapped girl. 

    Okay, now in case you want more here's a longer one, if not just skip this paragraph.  Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker team up in this action/comedy.   A personal friend's daughter of Inspector Lee, played by Jackie Chan (Rumble in the Bronx, Operation Condor) has been kidnapped.  Lee's friend is also really important somehow.  So Lee flies to America, where his friend lives, and boy I'll bet his arms were tired.  (Cue Rimshot.)  But the FBI wants nothing to do with the Chinese import, so they get screw up LAPD cop James Carter played by Chris Tucker (Friday, Money For Nothing) to take him around and keep him out of trouble, and more importantly, out of the FBI's way.  But Carter and Lee both have other ideas.   They team up to stop the kidnapper themselves.

     Okay, so this is basically the plot of just about every buddy cop movie ever made.  But I guess when you put new interesting actors in the roles, the script is still appealing to viewers.  The only thing that saved this movie was the combination of Tucker and Chan.

    Tucker is pretty much always funny to me.  The way he dances, and his high pitched woman screams are just hilarious.  Chan is one of the most talented people alive.  His previous movies were pretty much just showcasing his abilities, they lacked story line.  Rush Hour is a different type of movie.   I've always said that comedy is one of the most important aspects of action movies, and this one has the comedy in Chris Tucker, it also has the action in Jackie Chan.   The chemistry between the actors is decent, although Chan doesn't really say very much because his English still isn't that audible.  But what am I complaining about, his English is better than my Chinese. 

    The plot of course is just another boring story.  The screw up cop who has something to prove, and the pissed off cop who has a personal vendetta to settle, save the little girl by using their combination of screw ball antics and martial arts skill.  Ho hum.  But I guess it doesn't really matter because the movie was entertaining.

    But speaking of martial arts skill, there wasn't really too much of it.  Chan has a couple of sequences where he beats people up with anything from a pool cue to a Corvette steering wheel, but there actually wasn't as much as I'd expected.   Which is good.  They didn't force feed the viewer an entire movie full of fighting.  It was actually a decent amount.

     I guess that's about it.  Without Tucker this would have just been another typical Jackie Chan martial arts extravaganza.  And without Chan, the action would have been another typical Lethal Weapon type film.  So I'm gonna have to lay all the praise on the casting in this one, because the plot was unoriginal.  And that's that.

60% = C+