Rush Hour 1998, Rated PG-13

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Starring Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, et al. Released to DVD on January 26, 1999.

1. When my adversary is hanging from a railing 16 floors up, I will not try to hit him in the head with the suitcase that I am holding that contains $25 million in twenties and fifties.
2. When I decide to kidnap a foreign diplomat's daughter, demand $50 million in ransom, and then decide to blow up a building for kicks, I will not watch the scene unfold from a doorway across the street and rationalize that no one will recognize me.

And as an instructional video on precisely how not to pull a heist, Rush Hour was a good film, but on almost all other levels, Bret Rattner's second feature self-destructs. However, Rush Hour possesses two elements which dragged this production out of the Vancouver location on which it appeared to have been shot, and into the form of a somewhat enjoyable comedy: Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan.

Tucker and Chan star as, well, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. Tucker is a loud-mouthed member of the LAPD who, after blowing up a city block he shouldn't have, is assigned to baby-sit a Hong Kong police officer who has come to LA to help an old diplomatic friend find his kidnapped daughter, Chan.

Despite a few action scenes, car chases, and cleverly choreographed stuntsósomething that should be a given in any Chan filmóI didn't enjoy these facets as I should have because of their context in Rush Hour's almost flavorlessly non-existent script. The major chain of stunts in Rush Hour arises because Chan doesn't want to spend time with Tucker. And thusly, the two members of differing law enforcement agencies run after each other, climb onto busses, jump onto street signs, commandeer motorcycles, and point guns at one another, simply because Chan is sick of Tucker's lackadaisical attitude.

But, ultimately, while this is slightly distracting, this doesn't matter much because, at its heart, Rush Hour is a comedy. The film's most entertaining and humorous moments come with Tucker and Chan working off one another, with Tucker explaining to Chan what he may, and may not do in "a black man's car", and Chan singing along with the song "War". Tucker's hyper personality and near constant monologuing of his feelings and opinions works well when paired with Chan, who, thanks to his broken command of the English language, generally tries to speak as little as possible.

Tucker is a pleasure to watch no matter what movie he's in, ranging from Money Talks to Jackie Brown, but Rush Hour crumbles when compared with Tucker's stellar efforts in Friday and The Fifth Element. The reason for this lies in the quality of the scripts; while Ice Cube, DJ Pooh, and Luc Besson wrote passionately about worlds that they cared about, in tight and enjoyable fashion, Rush Hour's screenwriter Ross LaManna just went through the motions here, stringing together events to would seem to benefit a) Tucker's mouth, or b) Chan's fists of fury.

My overall enjoyment of Rush Hour was tempered slightly by the cheap feel of the production, but the entertainment value of this film is still leaps and bounds ahead of the majority of recently released videos. Just bear in mind that the plot occasionally gets stuck in traffic.