![]() Tucker has some good material I cracked up when he remarked on the lack of prestige at the LAPD: "We’re the most hated police force in the whole free world. Duh.īut while Jackie is held back, Tucker is given free rein to be as over-the-top as he wants, which is sometimes funny but more often merely crude and annoying. When you’re really shooting Jackie Chan, you cool it and let the audience get a good look. What’s more, Ratner doesn’t know how to shoot Jackie: Yes, many martial-arts movies use lots of close-ups and rapid cuts - because they’re trying to make an ordinary actor (say, Keanu Reeves) look as good as Jackie Chan. (The film’s first scene gives Jackie more room to do what he does than anything else in the rest of the movie.) That’s like hiring virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma and then rationing him no more than a single sheet of music at a time. For some reason, director Brett Ratner ( The Family Man) saw fit to rope in Jackie’s action scenes to short bursts of a minute or less. Rush Hour’s main weakness is its miscalculation in applying its stars’ assets. Along the way, of course, there are more action scenes: brawls in pool halls and Chinese restaurants, and a climactic showdown in an exhibition hall where Jackie must first try to beat up bad guys while protecting priceless Chinese artifacts before executing a grand finale stunt as boldly conceived as anything he’s ever done. Along the way they get some help from a female Hispanic bomb-squad trainee (Elizabeth Peña), whose introduction into the story guarantees that before all is said and done there will be a bomb that needs deactivating. ![]() Finally, Carter actually handcuffs Lee to his steering wheel, which does slow Lee down - but not nearly as much as it does Carter.Įventually, of course, Lee and Carter must learn to work together, respecting one other’s methods and abilities, blah blah blah. ![]() Then there’s a funny bit where Carter and Lee each draw guns on the other, leading up to an unexpected visual punchline. A brief stunt sequence involving a number of vehicles and a street sign is less energetic than a typical Jackie Chan stunt, but stands out for its exceptionally effortless grace. This leads to a clever string of scenes in which Carter tries to keep track of Lee while Lee tries to get to the Chinese embassy. That’s when the FBI contacts the LAPD and brings in Carter - not to assist in the investigation, as Carter originally thinks, but to keep Lee occupied and away from the case. Lee is a personal friend of the consul and his daughter, and the consul insists on having Lee flown to the States to assist the FBI in the investigation. What brings them together, albeit indirectly, is the kidnapping of the daughter (Julia Hsu) of the Chinese consul to the United States (Tzi Ma). Although opposites in practically every way, the two have one thing in common: Like all stars of buddy films, they prefer to work alone. Tucker plays Detective Carter, a disgraced maverick of the LAPD. The setup: Jackie plays Inspector Lee, a respected hero cop with the Hong Kong police. There was a plot of course - a hackneyed trifle involving kidnapping and a collection of priceless Chinese artifacts - but it gave the stars plenty of room to mug and goof, to explore the esoteric worlds of urban pool halls and Chinese takeout joints, to argue over the merits of the Beach Boys and the lyrics to Edwin Starr’s Vietnam-era anthem "War." Certainly Jackie and Tucker each seemed to be enjoying themselves, and audiences responded enthusiastically to their odd-couple synergy. Well, it wasn’t new, but it was reasonably fresh. ( Rush Hour was the first film in which Jackie worked up the courage to deliver his lines in English, as opposed to dubbing into English afterwards from a script.) Tucker’s self-aggrandizing attitude and outrageous banter made an obvious contrast for Jackie’s self-effacing, all-business supercop, and it was hoped that the clash of Hong Kong and the ’hood might somehow create something new and fresh. The theory seems to have been that Tucker ( Money Talks, The Fifth Element), whose fast-paced, high-pitched chatter sounds like an Eddie Murphy record played at 78 rpm, would compensate for Jackie’s so-so English.
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