Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are back in action in New Line Cinemas' Rush Hour 3

But Lee and Carter won’t be deterred. And no matter how many sexy women, lethal killers or diminutive overzealous French police officers attempt to stop them they will bring the evildoers to justice. After all, the only thing standing in their way is each other, and after so many years fighting side by side what could possibly go wrong? 

Well, in the case of Rush Hour 3 what went wrong was showing up on set that first day without a serviceable script. I got the odd feeling watching the last of the summer three-quels that Chan, Tucker and director Brett Ratner were making all of this up as they went along, Jeff Nathanson’s script nothing more then a template to improvise crazily off of. The problem is, none of that wild abandon or apparent improvisation works, and while the stars look like they’re having a ball I found myself sitting in my chair staring at my watch wondering when I could get up and go home.

In all fairness, neither 1998’s Rush Hour or its 2001 sequel were exactly masterpieces of the buddy action-comedy genre, but they did have some flair and excitement to them that was undeniably appealing. More, they were actually funny, and save for one brief bit of the diminutive duo facing off against a 7’9” kung-fu monstrosity I’m not sure I laughed a single solitary time. The jokes don’t just fall flat, the plummet from the sky and smash into a thousand teeny tiny pieces. The whole thing is like watching a bad sitcom the difference being those only waste a half hour of your time, not an excruciating 90-plus minutes.

Some of this is just nuts. Noemie Lenoir might be a pretty big star in France (she is, admittedly, amusingly wonderful in Francis Veber’s The Valet) but she’s perfectly dreadful here, her fist reactions to meeting Carter at a baccarat table so horrid I actually felt sorry for her. But that’s nothing compared to a brief montage taking place after our two heroes have a fight, the ballad played over the scene so insanely cliché I wondered if I’d accidentally wandered into a bad Austin Powers sequel.

I can only surmise how much money it took producers to convince the legendary Max von Sydow or the wonderful French actor Yvan Attal to appear in this. While they’re hardly terrible, they’re either given so little of interest to do or stuck with scenes so horrifically off-putting they might as well not even be in the picture. As for the great director Roman Polanski I don’t even know what to say, his few cameo moments so bad I kind of want to believe it was actually an imposter and he was nowhere near the set when they were shot.

A part of me feels I’m coming down a bit too hard. There are a couple of signature Chan moments including a deliriously invigorating battle atop the Eiffel Tower, and the two stars really do play off one another quite nicely. The thing is, none of this actually adds up to an entire movie, Rush Hour 3 feeling more like excerpted scenes from the previous two adventures re-edited together in order to make one last feature.  

That makes the movie a loser no matter how you look at it. Worse, it makes it the lamest trilogy capper of the entire summer, and considering just how disappointing Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End already were that’s saying something. Thankfully The Bourne Ultimatum opened just last week. If you really do need to see a sequel, go check that out and leave this final Rush Hour stuck in traffic with its hazard lights on where it belongs. 

Film Rating:  ê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Rush Hour 3 Theatrical Trailer
-  Rush Hour 2 Theatrical Trailer