Review of Rush Hour 3 (2007) by Stephanie M — 02 Sep 2012

I have loved Jackie Chan movies for about three decades now, so I may be overrating this film just as if I was asked to rate something my little brother had done.

"Rush Hour III" is ninety minutes of totally brainless vaudeville. Like, say, the "Charlie's Angels" movie, it is not so much a film (you know, with a story) as a succession of "numbers": a dance number, an acrobatic number, a comedy number...

It also suffers from too much crass humour. There is running joke about constipation, the main characters fall into the sewers, get anally probed, are urinated on by a dog... And then there is also much sexism, with Chris Tucke's character constantly looking at women's bodies, some stripping, etc.

I didn't remember the first two installments as being so below-the-belt, but then I can't say I remember them much (I can't say who the bad guy was in either of them.).

Much of the rest of the humour is slapstick. There is a rather silly scene with a clunky Chinese giant, Christ Tucker does his Michael Jackson dance, etc.

The Lalo Schiffrin theme has been given a nice seventies makeover and sounds really great. I wish the film had more of that seriousness about it.