Available at Amazon.com
Director
Brett Ratner
Cast
Jackie Chan – Inspector Lee
Chris Tucker – James carter
Hiroyuki Sanada – Kenji
Max von Sydow – Varden Reynard
Noemie Lenoir – Genevieve
Release Date: December 23rd
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Rating: PG 13
The Movie
A lot of the flack this move gets is that it is exactly the same as the first two. To that I say…The first two were kind of good. While it’s true, this movie doesn’t do much differently than the first two, that doesn’t make it a terrible movie. Tucker still plays the wise cracking black detective, and Lee is still the straight laced chinese investigator, and they both show some growth character wise from the first movie, Tucker around the waist and Lee in the character. They’ve added enough secondary characters to the third movie to make it seem fresh. Another thing that keeps these movies fresh is the time in between them. It’s been 9 years since Rush Hour 1 came out. If these movies had been crammed into 5 years, it would be old and stale by now, but since they’ve been given enough time in between movies, it keeps from being overly repetitive.
But at the same time, it follows the same path as the previous 2. It switches back and forth between which movie it is mimicking at any given time. It starts out like Rush Hour 1 with Lee and Carter being separate and you get a sense of conflict between the two. The plot gets rolling when Ambassador Han is shot at a UN type meeting called the World Justice Court, and in typical Rush Hour fashion, while Lee is chasing down the assassin, Carter is smooth talking the ladies. Soo Yung, the little girl from the first movie, makes both of them promise to track down the assassin. And since they know the next WJC meeting is in France, they’re off to the land of love.
It’s in France where they meet a taxi cab driver named George, who Ratner in the commentary refers to as a Peschi type character from the Lethal Weapon movies. While I see the comparison, it’s not really valid, Tucker is almost more of the Peschi role. While in France they’re trying to chase down Genevieve, pronounced Jean vi eve, to find out the secret behind the triads. Genevieve is played by the stunning Noemie Lenoir, who manages to pull of the Britney Spears shaved head look and still look incredibly attractive.
This is also the section of the movie where we see the growth of the two lead characters from the first movie, during the inevitable “split up” that happens between Carter and Lee in every one of these movies, we see Carter doing things that are stereotypically Chinese, and Lee doing things that are stereotypically black. Most film makers would have done this in subtle ways, but Rush Hour has never been about subtle, so they just come right out and have Lee order fried chicken while Carter gets Chinese.
Once Carter and Lee secure Genevieve, the plot twists and you have Carter and Lee in a fight on the Eifel Tower for the climax fight scene. The fight scenes are typical Jackie Chan fight scenes with lots of fun little moves to attack others. Carter even gets involved with the martial arts scenes in this movie, rather than just shooting a gun all the time. Lee and Kenji’s sword fight scene is pretty good. Ratner raves about how nice it was to have two people who knew how to handle a sword doing the scene. Ratner also claims that somewhere on the DVD is the sword fight, expect they both have light sabers.
The acting is good throughout the movie. Hiroyuki Sanada is great in the roll of Kenji, he’s a very cool, collected assassin. And Max von Sydow is his fantastic self as always. Lenoir does a great job of being beautiful and Yvan Attal is good as the American hating French taxi cab driver. There’s even a Roman Polanski sighting. The shots aren’t anything especially beautiful or artistic, but it keeps you focused on the story. There’s a couple jump cuts that can be kinda confusing for a second, but not terrible. There are a couple neat little things done with the editing. One that I liked was when Kenji and Lee are bouncing on the net, the movie cuts to a guy whom Carter is fighting falling on a rail, I thought it was a cool way to jump from one fight scene to the next.
A/V Quality
Shockingly, this movie has more CGI shots than Alien vs Predator. Over 500 CGI shots. Most are well hidden, while others are glaringly obvious. The sound is fine. There are a couple cool songs on the soundtrack, maybe not enough to pick it up in stores, but enough to make you think “Hey, that’s a pretty cool song.” once or twice throughout the movie.
Dolby 5.1EX
DTS-ES 6.1
Special Features
Commentary with Brett Ratner
Theatrical Trailer
Disc 2
Outtake Reel
Deleted Scenes/With Commentary
Making of Rush Hour 3
Production Diary
Storyboard
The Inside Pulse
If you liked the first two, you’ll like the third one. It’s the same slapstick comedy mixed with Jackie Chan acrobatics mixed with a solid action mystery plot. I liked it, it’s a solid Christmas gift.
The second disc really isn’t worth the added price. The outtake reel isn’t that funny, the best ones are in the credits anyway, so if you’re debating the single disc vs the 2 disc Platinum, I’d lean towards the 1 disc.
