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.

The three most important reasons for seeing RH2

[MartyJG]

1. Zhang Ziyi
2. Ziyi Zhang
3. That cute Chinese actress whose name I keep forgetting...