Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What an absolute tucker of a movie...., 25 Jan 2008
It's funny how a trilogy can change your mind about things. Lets get a few things straight right off the bat, I've been loving Jackie Chan movies for a long time, I love the subtitled Project A's to the badly dubbed Drunken Masters from way back when.
I loved the fact that if you want a story to enjoy, read a book, or watch a Van Damme movie (Joke) but if you wanted the best, undiluted action movie with no cheating special fx then go watch a movie with Chan flying about the top of a building somewhere or axe-kicking his way through to a mob boss in the middle of Timbuktu with no apparent reason or rhyme.
He'd been doing these flicks for the best part of three decades, from writing, acting, directing, stunting and even singing the soundtrack to some of his films (Seriously) they were great, ticked the boxes that the people who watched them wanted and that was that....Then all of a sudden Chan did what I like to call 'sold out' to the Americans. Now don't get me wrong, I don't blame him for it, I'm sure it paid well, blah blah but it resulted in churning out some really watered down movies, Hollywood movies where they try to accomplish too much from an action flick, a story, a thriller, some romance, when all we want is a can of whoop-ass to be opened-and every five or so minutes. Super slow mo scenes were added and stunt men stood in were Jackie would usually have been thrown from cars or choppers, the sort of films that your Van Damme's were making came out.
Now a few were pants, Rumble in the Bronx, Mr Nice guy etc but then came along Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon (Which is awesome - re other review due soon) and I would say JC officially landed in the US.
Now this is where my gripe starts. The first Rush Hour was a Jackie Chan movie with Chris Tucker supporting, it was, make no mistake, even though it was watered down action somewhat. The movie catered for JC fans with its action and Jackie stunts (Granted some were stuntmen) and apart from that, the only downfall into his US entrée was Chris Tucker who previously had been ruining films like The Fifth Element with his motor mouth.
It was OK though, if you could get past him, the film was an hour and a half laugh for most.
Then came Rush 2, which was much of the same fare, JC had churned out probably 3-4 films in-between whilst Chris Tucker had done nothing, it had a little more of Tuckers mouth, and a little less of Chan's feet, was funnier to the ears than the eyes if you get what I mean by what the focus was on. Then came this one.
The way this was advertised distressed me, since part 2, again Mr Chan had done 3-4 flicks, one of which Shanghai Knights (Also awesome - review pending) and Tucker ZERO, seriously, look it up, he made no movies in this space, and this movie was billed as Rush Hour 3, starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan! Chan had been bumped to supporting role! Unbelievable!
Yes this is a Chris Tucker movie, make no mistake, Jackie plays his sidekick, a foolish one at that, and it repulsed me...at first...until I sat through half an hour or so and the flip-flop came. I un-folded my arms, and allowed myself to laugh at this hilarious Tucker of a vehicle!
Really, it is funny as hell, I've finished ranting now because I am over it, I didn't think Tucker deserved to share the screen with such a legend as Chan, especially considering it is Chan who has kept his career alive, but on review, it was the best way to go with this trilogy because Jackie's stunts were getting old, whereas Tucker has so many comic scenes its ace...the one where he's arguing with Mr Me and Mr You made me wet my pants!
It's the sort of film that you can crack on at the end of most nights and just catch the odd fight scene, or the odd joke and enjoy without having to pay too much attention to.
I would recommend getting this if you are a hardened fan of Kung Fu, or not, even better would be the trilogy boxset which I think is going for less than a score, its worth it to see the transition in lead roles alone - plus all the outtakes of Tucker messing up the fights to Jackie messing up English is enough for an episode and a half of `It'll be Alright on the Night'
...One thing that still bothers me though is that despite Jackie keeping Tuckers career alive with this franchise, Chris still managed to negotiate a pay check double the size of the Drunken Masters....maybe all those bumps to Jackie's head has taken its toll.
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11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
After such a long wait, was it worth it?, 13 Dec 2007
After waiting so long it is a shame that this film delivered so little. The film really lives or dies on how much you like Chris Tucker. I personally find him very funny. However, in this film his high pitched antics wear thin very quickly. Whilst the humour in the first two films felt fresh and was genuinely funny, this time around we get gags which are very forced and the punch line is seen coming miles away. For example there is a scene with Tucker and two Chinese men, one called Yu and one called Me. You can guess the rest and yes this was funny once but has unfortunately been done to death in countless other films.
Another thing lacking is the outrageous and believable stunts from Jackie Chan. Sadly, age is beginning to catch up with him and rather than seeing fast, fluid fights we get ones which look slow and totally staged, rather than appearing to have any spontaneity.
Most of the budget appears to have been spent on Tuckers salary as some of the special effects are dire. The climax of the film, which takes place on the Eiffel Tower, sees some of the most unbelievable scenes seen in a supposed big budget blockbuster in a long time.
There are some redeeming parts. There is a lot of some chemistry between the lead actors who just about save the film from being a total turkey. If you like Tucker there are still parts which are amusing (like his directing of traffic at the start) and Chan, despite his age, still gives his all even though you wish he could things he did some years ago.
Overall though, what once felt fresh, funny and energetic now feels forced and lazy. When the funniest part is the out takes over the end credits you soon realise just how poor the film was.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
At least it's an improvement over Rush Hour 2..., 28 Jul 2009
So, is there anything good to say about Rush Hour 3? Not much, but there's less bad to say about it than Rush Hour 2, which is something to be grateful for at least. For starters, Brett Ratner has remembered that Jackie Chan's in the movie too and gives him something to do this time instead of pretty much reducing him to reaction shots to Chris Tucker's endless witless improvisation. Unfortunately not much of it is done very well, with rushed action scenes and - unforgivably - some pretty obvious CGi and stunt doubling which makes it pretty clear that after three films he still doesn't get what the whole point of putting Jackie Chan in a movie is. Still, Chan has at least one good stunt with a flag before it develops into too much of a spinoff of one used in A View to a Kill (and on the same Eiffel Tower location).
There's both less and more of the newly Supersized Tucker this time round: fewer of his unimaginatively improvised rants make the cut this time, but there's a lot more of him in an auditioning for Big Mamma's House 3 way. The comedy isn't exactly well executed, varying from a bad version of Yu's On First that suffers from lousy comic timing from both Tucker and the film's editor, Tucker pulling a gun on Yvan Attal's French cabbie because he - entirely reasonably - doesn't want to drive Tucker (not because he's black but because he's a loud and obnoxious American) to an anal exam by Roman Polanski's French police inspector with a Clouseau `tache. Just to show he's not playing favorites this time, Ratner ensures that the action scenes are just as typically lazily staged as if to prove that the surprisingly good ones in X-Men 3 were a one-off that probably owed more to a well storyboarded second unit than him finally learning how to shoot action. No surprises in what passes for a plot but is really just an excuse for the two stars to strut their stuff - when you've got an ex-Bond villain in the cast there aren't many shocks who the baddie turns out to be, though Chan turning out to have a Japanese brother in the triads must have caused a few raised eyebrows in Hong Kong. Yet while it's a long way from the surprisingly enjoyable first entry in the series, it's still watchable if you're in a particularly undemanding mood, and Chan has certainly done much worse for American studios.
Decent extras on the 2-disc set include a lengthy self-congratulatory video diary from director Ratner, deleted and extended scenes, trailers, featurettes and an amusing Star Wars-themed special effects gag hidden as an Easter Egg.
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