Action Hero MoviesThe first 1 hour was pretty much smooth highly entertaining action-comedy starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in an unusual partnership that neither wanted initially but turned out to be good for everyone except the bad guys.
The last half hour is a bit more tense, but is still alright. On the strength of the majority of the movie which is highly entertaining, I’m going to give this a Decent rating which is close to the limit of what a slapstick comedy can score.
It’s slightly dated, but not by much. The sound effects can get irritating, but it’s tolerable.
If you loved this movie, you’re in luck since there are a couple sequels although they’re not quite as good as the original.
Sequels
Rush Hour 2 (2001) picks up from where the first movie left off, with Jackie and Chris on holiday together, singing Beach Boys songs in a car in China when they get called to an urgent case. The sound effects early on are even more irritating than they were in the back end of the last movie. The sense of mystery is also gone, so the plot and even the action seem a bit hollow in places compared to last time round. As a result, I rate this one a step down from the original. We can call it Above Average. Roselyn Sanchez makes a nice addition to this movie, as one of the lead females – an undercover secret service agent. Whoever got her involved has great taste. Zhang Ziyi plays the other lead female – one of the main baddies. She does quite well too. John Lone plays the main bad guy, not very convincingly, but it suffices.
Rush Hour 3 (2007) is no less muddled but still contains some strengths including some originality — albeit less — and some remnants of what we loved from the previous Rush Hour movies. I rate this movie Bang Average. It basically replicates the same formula as the last one, but with a bit less of the goodness and a bit more of the annoying stuff — it’s just a slightly weaker version of the same thing really, which is roughly what the last one was from the original before it although the original had far more conceptual originality of course.