- Title: Rush Hour
- IMDb: link
The late 90s and early 2000s were the time for Hollywood to pair up Jackie Chan with a more comedic American co-star. Rush Hour gave us Chan as Chief Inspector Lee who is brought to the United States by Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma) after his daughter (Julia Hsu) is kidnapped. The FBI, not wanting Lee to get in the way, enlist mouthy LAPD Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) to babysit Lee and keep him out of the investigation. That doesn’t go well with neither happy about their limited role in the investigation.
The first of the three Rush Hour movies produced over a decade plays on the oil-and-water relationship between the two cops who, after they stop fighting each other, and begin working together, actually make better headway on the case than the largely incompetent FBI contingent. Tucker is a bit too much in Rush Hour for me, basically Alex Foley turned up to 15, and he works better for me in Rush Hour 2 where he’s toned down slightly with an established relationship with Lee providing more of a buddy comedy.
Although the kidnapping of the young girl (who would return for the third film in the franchise) works as a catalyst for events, the film’s rich villain hiding in plain sight (Tom Wilkinson) and his chief henchmen (Ken Leung) are both largely disappointing. On the plus side, we do get some fun stunt sequences with Chan, and some of the Lee and Carter interactions, particularly those of Carter underestimating and having to chase down Lee, are humorous. 26 years later, Rush Hour is a bit of a mixed bag but still manages to check most of the boxes for a B-movie action comedy.
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