Picking up six years after we last seen the motor mouth carter and Kung fu Lee. The pair is reunited in LA where Lee is escorting Ambassador Han to the World Court to propose a testimony, revealing a list of all the leaders in China’s deadliest Triad organization.
Paying for his sins against the world, Carter is working as a traffic cop. As you can expect the all singing and dancing Carter still manages to screw up this job, especially when it’s rush hour! (Sorry, I just had to pun!).
Before he could reveal the list Ambassador Han is struck down in an assassination attempt. Hot on the pursuit of the shooter (Hiroyuki Sanada), Lee soon catches up be realizing his connection with the killer leaves him with a lump in his throat allowing him to escape.
The Ambassadors daughter Soo-Yung (Zhang Jingchu) to whom is now a young woman feared that this might happen, she advises Lee that she has an envelope with key evidence of her father’s proposal. They just need to collect it from her locker at the local karate academy.
Madness arises leading both Lee and Carter on a whirlwind trip to Paris chasing the infamous list for Ambassador Han. In Paris they meet aromatic singer/dancer Genevieve (Noemie Lenoir), she’s some how connected with this whole mess and they discover that the list is a lot closer to home than they both realize.
When glancing at the reviews of the movie I was amazed at negativity towards it “1 out of 5 hats” and “Just a crummy action film”. Obviously the critics seemed to have grown tired of the mismatched duo, what happened to “The fastest hands in the East versus the biggest mouth in the West”?
I got the impression that Brett Ratner has choose to enhance their characters and swapping their personality’s, referring back to the speech of “I’m Half Chinese, Baby!” etc. They brought out a cruder image of Jackie; the swearing stands out most and they gave Chris Tucker more action sequences and he won those fights without Jackie’s help.
Personally I enjoyed the movie, I loved them referencing the past movie two movies, whether it’s singing War, mentioning the gfilta fish or ordering Camel’s Hump. The only parts that made me really frown was older female Chinese assassin (ugly!) and the flag moment.
I did love the Asian cast though, Hiroyuki Sanada was excellent, his English is great, his aged look just gives him that evil edge. It was great to see Tzi Ma returning from the first movie, but 9 years has aged him well. Jingchu Zhang was also a excellent addition to the cast, it’s hard to believe that she played that bit part in Seven Swords, she spoke amazing English! This could be a step for her into the American market, this is how it kick started Zhang Ziyi in the States, sure there’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I expect far more people to have heard of Rush Hour 2.
