Rush hour was originally produced under the working title 'demographic splice missile' but then a focus group sampling the target audience found that too obscure and thus the title was changed to reflect the time the session took place. That the original was such a huge hit is testament to the fact that the cynicism that green lights the likes of this derivative, formulaic toss is very well founded. American audiences really are that easy and frankly, if this is what they want, they deserve a double shunting each.
To recap the original partnered the matalan Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan with 'funnyman' Chris Tucker. Why the inverted commas? Because Tucker, a man with a voice that sounds like the a recording of a pig being slaughtered, is a witless hysteric whose trademark rapid fire noise ruins any film in which it features. The fifth element might have survived the ridiculous production design by gay fashion moron Jean Paul Gautier but it had no chance against Tucker's high pitched squealing. Why anyone of any age, sex, colour or nationality would find this milk curdling sound audible yet alone funny, is one of the great mysteries of the modern film era. Regardless millions of mentally retarded wide eyed drones laughed the first film to blockbuster status awed by Chan's chop sockey manipulation of common objects in contrived situations, bowled over by Tucker's bolt on wisecracks and positively arse over face at Brett Ratner's workmanlike direction.
Rush Hour 2 followed in which the crazy cops did more of the same and were rewarded by a gross that made you pinch yourself with the severed fingers of the woman you'd killed in that first flush of anger. Were American ethnic minorities really so underrepresented in the studios annual output that they'd flock to see this in their millions? To put Rush Hour's coinage into some kind of perspective, imagine Shanghai Noon making $300m at the American box office. Doesn't feel right does it? No, dark forces were at work here jet black in fact and now they're back for another bite of an already maggot ridden cherry.
Rush 3 was much delayed, not least because Tucker, a man in such high demand that he's been offered precisely nothing between Rush Hour movies, held out for an obscene $25m payday. There's no mystery as to why you don't see CT in anything else what else can he do? He's completely hopeless. Cynical enough to rest on his non-existent laurels and obviously as clueless as the rest of us as to why he can become a multi-millionaire for doing absolutely sod all, he returns here to extend a franchise that was tired from the moment it started. The irrelevant plot is your standard washing line arrangement onto which a string of predictable comic and action set pieces are hung. The action shifts to Paris for reasons that won't concern you and from that point it really is an easy assignment for Hollywood script software B.A.N.G (the b-movie action narrative generator) here given the non de plume 'Jeff Nathanson'. America hating cab driver George is introduced as a clumsy stab at satirizing Franco-US relations post Iraq but this being a Brett Ratner movie the joke is as weak as a pint of p*ss topped up with tap water. George becomes a convert to American aggression of course but an attempt at self-deprecation 'It feels good to kill people for no reason' is lost on the Christopher Pike, bleeping chair crowd this thing is aimed at. If the jokes have all the polish of one of those grimy vans onto which someone has hand written 'clean me', what about the action? Its pedestrian stuff, predictable seen it all before cut and paste histrionics underscoring Ratner's reputation as a hack par nonchalance. To his eternal shame Roman Polanksi has an extended cameo here and considering his past it really is something to say he's never looked more embarrassed and thank God Ingmar Bergman died recently because the sight of Max Von Sydow in this mindless trudge might have killed him otherwise.
Punishingly poor and half an hour too long at just 90 minutes, Rush Hour 3 is the reason that people talk about the slow death of cinema, though in this case its a case of suicide. Its not that it's risible, every year has its crop of photochemical waste, it's simply that it's done so well. Inexplicable. Interminable. Intolerable.
To recap the original partnered the matalan Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan with 'funnyman' Chris Tucker. Why the inverted commas? Because Tucker, a man with a voice that sounds like the a recording of a pig being slaughtered, is a witless hysteric whose trademark rapid fire noise ruins any film in which it features. The fifth element might have survived the ridiculous production design by gay fashion moron Jean Paul Gautier but it had no chance against Tucker's high pitched squealing. Why anyone of any age, sex, colour or nationality would find this milk curdling sound audible yet alone funny, is one of the great mysteries of the modern film era. Regardless millions of mentally retarded wide eyed drones laughed the first film to blockbuster status awed by Chan's chop sockey manipulation of common objects in contrived situations, bowled over by Tucker's bolt on wisecracks and positively arse over face at Brett Ratner's workmanlike direction.
Rush Hour 2 followed in which the crazy cops did more of the same and were rewarded by a gross that made you pinch yourself with the severed fingers of the woman you'd killed in that first flush of anger. Were American ethnic minorities really so underrepresented in the studios annual output that they'd flock to see this in their millions? To put Rush Hour's coinage into some kind of perspective, imagine Shanghai Noon making $300m at the American box office. Doesn't feel right does it? No, dark forces were at work here jet black in fact and now they're back for another bite of an already maggot ridden cherry.
Rush 3 was much delayed, not least because Tucker, a man in such high demand that he's been offered precisely nothing between Rush Hour movies, held out for an obscene $25m payday. There's no mystery as to why you don't see CT in anything else what else can he do? He's completely hopeless. Cynical enough to rest on his non-existent laurels and obviously as clueless as the rest of us as to why he can become a multi-millionaire for doing absolutely sod all, he returns here to extend a franchise that was tired from the moment it started. The irrelevant plot is your standard washing line arrangement onto which a string of predictable comic and action set pieces are hung. The action shifts to Paris for reasons that won't concern you and from that point it really is an easy assignment for Hollywood script software B.A.N.G (the b-movie action narrative generator) here given the non de plume 'Jeff Nathanson'. America hating cab driver George is introduced as a clumsy stab at satirizing Franco-US relations post Iraq but this being a Brett Ratner movie the joke is as weak as a pint of p*ss topped up with tap water. George becomes a convert to American aggression of course but an attempt at self-deprecation 'It feels good to kill people for no reason' is lost on the Christopher Pike, bleeping chair crowd this thing is aimed at. If the jokes have all the polish of one of those grimy vans onto which someone has hand written 'clean me', what about the action? Its pedestrian stuff, predictable seen it all before cut and paste histrionics underscoring Ratner's reputation as a hack par nonchalance. To his eternal shame Roman Polanksi has an extended cameo here and considering his past it really is something to say he's never looked more embarrassed and thank God Ingmar Bergman died recently because the sight of Max Von Sydow in this mindless trudge might have killed him otherwise.
Punishingly poor and half an hour too long at just 90 minutes, Rush Hour 3 is the reason that people talk about the slow death of cinema, though in this case its a case of suicide. Its not that it's risible, every year has its crop of photochemical waste, it's simply that it's done so well. Inexplicable. Interminable. Intolerable.