Rush Hour 3

When last we saw Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in Rush Hour 2, Tucker was making obnoxious wisecracks and Chan was cracking skulls. This time around, it’s a whole new ball game, with Tucker making obnoxious, violent threats to civilians and Chan, well, still cracking skulls. Lacking the "fish out of water,” good-natured humour of the original, Rush Hour 3 is a laugh-less, plot-less return to a series that barely needed a sequel, let alone two. When Hong Kong’s famous Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) returns to Los Angeles as a bodyguard for the Chinese Ambassador, his American partner-in-crime fighting, Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker), jumps in to help out. The two are soon caught in the dangerous web of the Chinese Triad Crime Syndicate and must search out the secret leaders of the criminal underworld in order to save the daughter of the Chinese Ambassador, who has been marked for death. The two-dimensional characters of "straight-laced Asian detective” teamed with "wild American cop” that worked well in the original Rush Hour have since deteriorated to little more than caricatures. Chris Tucker’s character, who was always brash and irritating, has added threatening civilians with his firearm and fighting children to his repertoire of wacky behaviour, and Jackie Chan has simply become a prop to stage elaborate fight scenes around. Rush Hour 3’s complete lack of sensible plot hampers its ability to produce humour beyond the simplest slapstick pratfalls, leaving the only laughs to be found in the outtake reel during the final credits. The DVD comes in a bizarrely unnecessary two-disc special edition designed to suck money from the wallets of unsuspecting fans, with only features like an outtake reel, understandably deleted scenes and a series of dull "making of” clips to fill the second disc. There is a distinct possibility that Rush Hour 3 is less fun than getting caught in actual rush hour traffic. Don’t be in a hurry to rent this one.