RUSH HOUR 2  (2001)  *1/2

Reviewed 8/4/01

Judging purely from the onscreen results of director Brett Ratner’s latest Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker vehicle, RUSH HOUR 2, the sole reason this sequel exists is because of the moderate success of the first one.   Certainly no love of craft or sense of fun makes its way into the final product.

The customary outtakes in a Jackie Chan movie during the end credits is particularly revealing in RUSH HOUR 2.  In one blunder, Don Cheadle, one of the best actors working today, impatiently chides star Tucker for continuously screwing up a scene.  In another, Tucker actually picks up a real cell phone call mid-scene.  Chan is politely flabbergasted at the lack of professionalism on display.

The first RUSH HOUR, also directed by Ratner, was utterly perfunctory, a movie that removed all the charm and idiosyncrasy from Chan’s Hong Kong productions and replaced them with the occasionally funny joke and bland action.  In the second installment, you’re lucky to crack a smile, and if a single sequence makes it into Chan’s career highlights reel, the editor was bribed.  Basically, the sequel pales in comparison to the original, which was already very mediocre in the first place.

Chan is getting too old for this, but he was still able to muster an impressive climatic showdown only two years ago in WHO AM I?, one of his Hong Kong productions.  The climax here can be described as anything but.  Tucker is more annoying than amusing.  He could be one of those dated black stereotypes Spike Lee so despised in BAMBOOZLED.  Zhang Ziyi, one of the stars of last year’s surprising success, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, goes from interesting spoiled, conflicted kung fu princess to a one-dimensional killer kewpie doll here.  To be fair, she has probably never made anything like the kind of money Chan and Tucker got.  Still, it is sad to see her take a role which is more grimacing than actual acting.

The most repellent aspect of RUSH HOUR 2 is the rubbing in its audience’s face the film’s incessant misogyny and racial slurs.  The filmmakers frame the sexism and racism in “knowing” terms as in, these characters do not know better, but we do, so feel free to laugh.  It is as degrading as the political correctness it is mocking.  Also toss in a white male corporate villain and a gay stereotype, and the filmmakers can claim their misanthropy is directed fairly because it is directed at everyone.

Oh, the plot has something to do with the bombing of an American Embassy in Hong Kong, $100 million in counterfeit bills, and a money laundering plot hatched by a Chinese triad, not that it makes a note of difference.