Entertainment, Movies - Air Force Times

Latest round is more of the same for ‘Rush Hour’

Observations about “Rush Hour 3,” the latest “Brett Ratner film” in the increasingly worn franchise starring motormouth Chris Tucker and motorfists Jackie Chan:

• Any time a comedy or action duo is described in the film’s media kit as “beloved,” be afraid.

• A little Chris Tucker goes a long, long way.

• Jackie Chan is getting, like, old (53 at the moment).

And then there’s this mystery, which has baffled me for several years now: Why does Brett Ratner merit having his name and directing credit spoken aloud over his film’s trailers by voiceover artist Don LaFontaine?

Ratner, who has done all three of the “Rush Hour” films and can credit the first one for launching his singular career to date, knows how to put a shiny gloss on a movie, and how to keep you distracted with one hand while shoveling stuff with the other.

But the “Rush Hour” franchise is feeling increasingly forced in a lot of ways. Part of that comes from the fact that it has been six years since “Rush Hour 2,” an extended vacation forced mainly by Tucker’s demand for a $20 million paycheck.

The second flaw is in the filmmakers’ strenuous efforts to turn this into a multichapter endeavor along the lines of “Pirates of the Caribbean.” That’s a mistake; the material is just too thin, less substantive even than “Pirates.”

The most overt sign of this strategy is the reintroduction of characters from the first “Rush Hour” back in 1998 by writer Jeff Nathanson, who also wrote for the better “Rush Hour 2.”

That would be Chinese Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma) and his comely daughter Soo Yung (Zhang Jingchu), now 20. Han is shot in Los Angeles just as he’s about to testify in a big Pacific underworld racketeering case.

Meanwhile, Carter (Tucker) has been busted to traffic cop, while Lee (Chan) is playing bodyguard for Han. He soon realizes the assassin is his long-lost “brother” from their childhood together in an orphanage.

This precipitates a typical misadventure that has the duo landing in Paris, which enables a long string of warmed-over wisecracks from Tucker at the expense of various cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

The big finale, at the Eiffel Tower, is a mild hoot, but this whole thing needs a vitamin B-12 shot. “Rush Hour 3” is not helped by the fact that it opens on the heels of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” a franchise that is taking fistfights to a new level of frenzy (even if you can never tell what’s going on in those scenes).

Perhaps in deference to Chan’s age, the physical action is diminished. Chan has only a few set-piece fight scenes, and the CGI shows in some shots. To compensate, Chan tries to veer into more comic material. He may be the sweetest guy who ever kicked somebody in the groin, but he still labors over the yuks.

The movie’s most egregious sin, however, may be Nathanson’s dragging in Abbott & Costello’s hoary “Who’s On First” routine.

To his credit, Ratner knows not to overstay his welcome; the movie wraps up in less than 90 minutes. In some ways, it still seems too long.

By this point, no one should be unaware of what the “Rush Hour” shtick is about; in the third installment, you get exactly what you expect — no more, no less.

2 stars. Rated PG-13. Opens Aug. 10.