Review: Rush Hour 2

With the possible exception of Shrek, I haven't seen an audience have as much fun all summer as the full house yukking through Rush Hour 2, a multi-cultural martial arts comedy/adventure/ cop/ buddy movie and testament to the still- growing sweep and reach of Hong Kong cinema, for which Jackie Chan deserves much credit. Lots of laughs in an unpretentious movie that stars one actor's mouth and another's feet.

Even though it's only the second movie in the series, Chan and Chris Tucker have already achieved a lot of the chemistry that worked so well for Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon series. Chan and Tucker don't act as well, and the plots and writing are weaker, but they're funnier, and Chan's martial arts tricks, gags and maneuvers are, as always, amazing. It was a nice touch to pair these two -- who do a non-stop series of black/Asian riffs on one another -- with Crouching Tiger's brooding and beautiful Zhang Ziyi.

This movie is neither balletic or inventive, but nobody expects it to be, and it makes no claims for itself that it doesn't fully deliver on, a rarity this summer. The movie is fast-paced and good-hearted. Tucker is a bit shrill, but he gets off a furious string of put-downs, double entendres and racial spoof lines, and plays well off of the good-natured Chan, who can kick-box 20 bad guys but can't yet say "Madison Square Garden" on the first take. The settings are neat too -- the movie skips from Hong Kong to L.A. to Las Vegas as Tucker and Chan track down one of the mysterious Hong Kong Triads - yes, they're in Lethal Weapon also -- bent on flooding the U.S. with counterfeit money.

The plot is even more ridiculous than the first Rush Hour but it doesn't matter. It's striking to see the impact Hong Kong cinema has had on American movies, from this comedy to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to The Matrix. Jackie Chan deserves a lot of the credit, bringing the genre to the attention of Hollywood studios and many moviegoers.

This is an honest Grade B comedy, playing off a few very good lines, lots of well-choreographed martial arts battles -- one goes up the side of a building under construction, another takes place in a steam bath with combatants clad only in towels. Chan and Tucker obviously have a lot of fun working together, and it comes through in the movie. There is always the sense of two cultures sparking off one another in funny ways, as Chan struggles to deal with hip-hop and Tucker mangles phrases from his Chinese-English dictionary.

Nobody will say this is a great movie, but it was plenty of fun. Chan's hilarious, self-mocking outtakes are, as always, well worth sticking around for. He brings the audience into the movie-making process in ways that are open and appreciated -- everybody in my theater stayed behind. He seems to be reminding us -- and maybe himself -- not to take things too seriously. CT Throwing in my 2 bits on this just because I can (complain all you want posters! I'm abusing my privilage!) I enjoyed the flick a lot. I walked in, and was entertained. Final Fantasy and Moulin Rouge were the last 2 movies that I can say that about. The action sequences are nothing compared to CTHD, but damnit, they're fun. Many shots are super spoofy and just really funny, but I only saw maybe one shot that looked really fake (and thats including the shots that were supposed to look fake). Tucker and Chan are terrible actors, and half of the jokes are the bland Saturday Night Live caliber comedy that I would leave the theater over, but then they hit a zinger. Dammit I laughed and had a lot of fun. Then I went home and watched Romeo Must Die to see some real action.

Comments

Re:That's Chan's style

[maaaaanis]

When Jacki was here in Australia about 5 or so years ago making a couple of films that I was lucky enough to work on, he was adamant that he would never work in the US again (I think the last film he did in the US before then was Cannonball Run!). He hasn't got anything against the US as such, just his style of film making conflicts totally with the more professional, organised and unionised style of Hollywood filmcrews. Basically the guy is (or was) an insane workaholic, when he works on his own Hong Kong productions there's hardly a job on set and post production that he doesn't do.
I remember being on set one day watching him go about setting up a stunt scene. He correographed the stunt, wrote the lines to go along with it, directed the other actors then carried the camera to the top of a scaffold to set the camera angle he wanted. Later that evening, whilst he was in the studio where I was recording his voice-overs for a previous film, he broke the session so that he could look at the rushes from the previous days shoot. I thought he'd have an editor or an assistant do all the menial work for him but he grabbed the film cans and ran upstairs to the edit bench, laced up the print and sound himself. When I asked if he needed any help he got shitty and explained that he had an edit bench in his hotel room where he edited the film each night. He even did sound effects in the foley room later on when he wasn't happy with what the sound editors had done.
The main reason he doesn't (or didn't) like working for Hollywood was that union regulations wouldn't let him doing anything but act, he had to just sit in his trailer until his was called and they didn't appreciate his input into the correographing of fight scenes theat he felt were lame.
I guess things have changed a bit now, he's close to 50yo now and the injuries were starting to take there toll five years ago, so I guess that doing films like Rush hour are something akin to retirement for him ;-)
One more thing I have to say is, he really is one of the warmest, most genuine guys you could work with in the film industry, not one hint of pretentiousness at all he treats everyone he works with equally and is funny as hell.
The dude rocks all round.

Re:Jackie who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, Samo and Norris even got their starts in acting appearing in Bruce Lee movies.
As well as Jackie Chan...

He was playing in Enter The Dragon as one of the (insignificant) opponents of Bruce Lee. Here is a picture Bruce being nasty with Jackie... :-)

(Go see the whole site tho, it is much better than the official)

Not a great movie, but a fun movie

[sg3000]

I agree with Katz on this one. Jackie Chan's movies are always fun, and although I enjoyed Rush Hour 2, it wasn't as good as Rush Hour 1 or Rumble in Toronto -- I mean Rumble in the Bronx. In Rush Hour 1, the script was a little tighter and made a little more sense. Rumble in the Bronx had some of Jackie's best stunts, particularly in the gang fight scene with Stigmata by Ministry playing in the background.

Rush Hour 2 felt, well rushed, where the script needed a little more polishing. This makes sense because I heard that Chan wasn't happy with the results of the stunts in the movie. The first act was pretty painful, but the movie got better in Act 2 and 3. But the script could have benefited from a rewrite (or perhaps this was just an editing problem). What was the point of the "Snoopy tattoo"? Why did the customs agent say she got rid of Lee and Carter when she really sent them to find the plates? Why did Lee carry around his dad's badge all the time (he took it to the US on a spur of the moment trip with Carter)? Why did Ricky Tan look younger than Lee even though he used to be Lee's father's partner?

The movie was funny though. Chris Tucker was funny once again, and Jackie Chan still excels at physical comedy. Chan also gets bonus points for doing the incredible stunts himself -- which should embarrass American "action stars" like Swartzenegger, Willis, Stallone, Reeves, etc. In an industry where any person with access to a harness, a computer to digitally remove the harness, tons of explosives, and sunglasses can be called an action star, it's cool to see Jackie Chan do his own stunts and make them look breathtaking.

That's Chan's style

[jsse]

Chan and Tucker don't act as well, and the plots and writing are weaker, but they're funnier, and Chan's martial arts tricks, gags and maneuvers are, as always, amazing.

I live in Hong Kong.

Chan pioneered a new style of martial art movie ever since his first movie in Hong Kong, Drunken Fighter,(Many years ago, you probably haven't seen it) which added comedy elements in martial fighting.

Jacky Chan said in a local radio that he had a hard time working with Hollywood movie makers. He doesn't like they took everything too seriously. For example he proposed to use a silver-dye paper gun for a gun-kicking shot. The Hollywood producers didn't like it, but he argued the kicking scene just took 0.02 sec and nobody would notice.

That's his style, he'd rather put more effort to add more action and fun in action movie, then to spend time to build the plot.

Frankly I don't like watching weak-plot movies but his work is still very entertaining.

Romeo must die???

[dasmegabyte]

God, that movie had the WORST cinematography of any movie ever made. They had one trick: take a picture of the start of an action, cut to another angle so the actor doesn't actually have to do any work when jumping or kicking or firing a shot, and then cut to a third angle to show the denoument of the action. To anybody who's ever seen a real hong kong action film (and i don't mean those stupid "wire films," either), this American trick spoils everything. The actors in these films are genuinely talented...they don't need three takes to make one action look good. Some of the best Jackie Chan movies are filmed from a very far exterior angle shot, so you can see the surreal, comic fluidity of their motions. A perfect example of this is Supercop (see the HK version if you can...the changes made for the US release are notoriously dumb, and the lip sync horrid). Michelle Yeoh's high kicks and splits as she defeats 10 surrounding opponents is filmed in such a way that you can see every limb as she does so. It's obvious that there's nobody holding her up when she jumps, she's doing her own stunts and it makes the film much higher quality.

These American Chan films have a similar failing...they never show his limbs! Watch "Shanghai Noon" and try to count the number of times you actually see him connect with his foot when he kicks something, as compared to the number of times he lashes out and then they show a guy stumbling back. Count also the number of times you can see a character's face or upper body during an attack. It may be more "graphic novel" to show action in close up, but it's also more artificial.

I want my Chan where he belongs...in the director's seat, in control of the camera for action shots, working with somebody ELSE's script (so the film doesn't have the stupid touchy-feely multiculutral nice guy feel that Chan's movies often do). Just giving him a part or letting him choreograph a fight isn't enough; for a truly great Chan film you need to picture the whole scene...after all, what would Picasso's Guernica be, looked at through a toilet paper roll?

Re:Romeo must die???

[bedheading]

Actually.. that 3-shot technique was originated in Hong Kong cinema. Watch some of the more dated Hong Kong action films, especially scenes where actors run up walls and such... One shot of the feet going up the wall, another shot of actor on the wall, another shot of actor coming down. In modern films, you'll probably see visual effects done with a computer instead, but that's where it started. It's a technique used when they need to film something physically impossible. You may be right about it being overused in American film-making, but it originated in Hong Kong and it had a purpose.

Re:Films?

[WickedClean]

Becauses reviewers lack the creativity to actually create a decent story, so they use their lack of creativity to critique the stories of others. Most movie reviewers only like movies about gays and retards, which is why Forrest Gump and The Crying Game were loved by critics all over.