Rush Hour 2
2001
Director: Brett Ratner
Stars: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Zhang Ziyi, John Lone
While vactioning in Hong Kong, LA detective Chris Tucker is roped in by his buddy Jackie Chan into helping to investigate a smuggling ring. Like the first movie, their superiors don't want them on the case, but the duo continues on anyway, where the trail eventually leads back to a new casino in Las Vegas.
Like most sequels, Rush Hour 2 is just pretty much a re-hash of its predecessor, except this time most of the jokes come at Tucker's expense as he tries to fit into Hong Kong. And most of the problems that I had with the first movie still hold here -- namely, an unoriginal plot (complete with some weak twists), lame jokes and lackluster action sequences. Things are even worse in the action department this time around, as there are several shots that are obviously blue screened or use doubles for Jackie. Thankfully, Zhang Ziyi (who plays one of Triad boss' John Lone's bodyguards) adds some much needed punch, but unfortunately, she never really gets into it with Jackie, instead fighting it out with Tucker most of the time. At least they didn't have Tucker busting out some Matrix-style wire-fu.
Despite its' problems, though, I found Rush Hour 2 to be a fairly enjoyable comedy/action movie (even a bit more so than the first film), especially in light of recent Hollywood big-budget stinkers like The Mummy Returns. Chris Tucker has reigned in his energy a bit from the first movie, so I wasn't as annoyed with him this time out -- and he does have good chemistry with Jackie, which makes their scenes together fun to watch when the jokes are right (such as one sequence where they are spying on a beautiful secret agent undressing). Even with lukewarm reviews, Rush Hour 2 seems to be a huge hit -- its' nearly $70 million opening weekend set a new record for a comedy movie. Just don't go in expecting too much and you should have a good (if brainless) time with this movie.
RATING: 6.5
Note: the movie eventually went on to make more than 225 million dollars (making it the fourth-highest grossing US film in 2001), making it Jackie's most profitable movie by far. Not surprisingly, a sequel is already in the works.
A review for the DVD of this movie can be found here