I was always fascinated as a kid when an old movie star or musician would die and my parents would get sad—it was a window into their lives before I existed, and not just their lives but a whole world of lives, a breathing cultural atmosphere, a past that was as real as my present even though I couldn’t feel it. These people I lived with and thought I knew had intense relationships with a galaxy of celebrities whose names meant nothing to me. They had crushes on them, they went on first dates to their movies, they saved up to buy their records and cried to their songs, and then, like, thirty years later, Lana Turner would die and I’d say, “Who?” and my dad would shake his head and say, “Oh, she was terrific.” She was???? What else do you love that I don’t know about!? Who are you really, sir?
I realized today that someday Jackie Chan will die (probably? I mean, maybe not?) and my kids will be like, “Who?” and I’ll try to explain about Rush Hour and Chris Tucker and how when I was a kid Jackie Chan was not just famous but UBIQUITOUS, and they’ll shrug and file it away under “old celebrity” just like I did with my parents—as though Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker belong in the same folder as, say, Hulk Hogan and Dustin Diamond. I need you to understand the subtle striations of my culture, children! Those who do not know Dustin Diamond are doomed to repeat him!
It’s particularly galling to think about Rush Hour going into the memory hole because Rush Hour is the definition of STILL HOLDS UP. WOW, RUSH HOUR IS STILL SO FUCKING FUNNY EVEN IN 2020. The Fugitive is the only good movie, but so is Rush Hour.
Actually, I can’t say that Rush Hour is perfect because director Brett Ratner is a known sex creep who has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by at least nine women, and also the ONE AND ONLY female character in the movie (other than “sexy crime waitress” and “kidnapped child”) is sexually harassed literally every time she is on-screen, plus every time Jackie Chan says a punch line the score plays a gong. Whether or not to watch Rush Hour is the kind of sticky post-#MeToo judgment call we now have to make all the time, and there’s no map other than your own personal instincts and comfort zone. Unfortunately, due to the indefatigable vileness of men throughout history, sexual exploitation and abuse of power have pervaded all of our art and media, and everything is tainted and fucked!
If you feel gross renting Rush Hour and having a portion of your money filter back to Brett Ratner, you definitely should not watch it. Don’t make yourself feel gross!! Take care of yourself! If you do want to watch it, here are some ideas: 1) take the money you spent on renting Rush Hour and send double that to an organization that helps survivors of sexual violence; 2) borrow the DVD from your cousin, then send some money to an organization that helps survivors of sexual violence anyway; 3) illegally download it and then send a taunting letter to Brett Ratner; 4) remember that lots of dedicated, brilliant cast and crew members and other professionals who are not accused of multiple rapes also worked extremely hard on Rush Hour; 5) remember that absolutely nothing great about Rush Hour is great because of Brett Ratner. You can say, “Lindy, you have no way of knowing that; you have not worked on a set with Brett Ratner,” but I know that Brett Ratner didn’t make Chris Tucker funny and Jackie Chan charming! Sorry!
People always accuse feminists of taking the fun out of everything, but can you see how it is actually Brett Ratner who did that?????
Okay, anyway, we open on the last day of British rule in Hong Kong, and Jackie Chan is beating up an entire crime syndicate on a ship because they stole five thousand years of Chinese artifacts and Jackie Chan loves artifacts! He’s trying to bring down the mysterious and mega-deadly crime boss Juntao, but all he finds is a henchman (Ken Leung, UNDERAPPRECIATED) who manages to escape in a lil boat. Jackie Chan is upset but still excited he got the art back. It’s nice when people kick other people in the head in defense of art!!!
Jackie Chan’s boss, Mr. Han, the Chinese consul, is having a dinner party to celebrate his family’s big move to Los Angeles, and his friend Tom Wilkinson is toasting him warmly. I’m sorry, but if there’s a British guy in a suit who talks in the first five minutes of your movie, he’s the villain! If it’s Tom Wilkinson, you’re fucked.
Jackie Chan informs Mr. Han that Juntao and the henchman got away, but he did save the art. They decide to call that a win!
Jackie Chan says goodbye to Mr. Han’s little daughter, Soo Yung, his best student, and tells her to make sure she practices her kicks and eye gouges. “Don’t worry,” he says, “America is a very friendly place.” SOB!!!
Meanwhile, in America, Chris Tucker is friendlily buying some C-4 out of the trunk of Chris Penn’s car. Man, everything in the ’90s was about C-4! I heard the word C-4 more times while writing Shit, Actually than I’d heard it in the last twenty years. But less times than I heard it in the month of April 1998 alone!
Two dumbass cops try to arrest them, but Chris Penn shoots both of them and drives off. Chris Tucker, who is actually an undercover cop (GOOD JOB), shoots the car and the C-4 blows up. Then he’s like, “Yeah!” and does a dance. While I appreciate the dance, this situation does not warrant it!
Mr. Han, now settled down in the Chinese consulate in LA (which is…Downton Abbey?), promises Soo Yung that he will pick her up from school and sends her off with a chauffeur and a bodyguard. On the way, Soo Yung is singing along to Mariah Carey, having the fricking time of her life in the back seat, and for some reason the driver and the guard are rolling their eyes and barfing in their own mouths, and I’m not saying I’m glad that five seconds later they get murdered by Ken Leung, but I think we can all agree that their hands aren’t exactly clean!!!!!
Soo Yung almost gets away, pulverizing the kidnappers’ domes with her wicked kicking just like Jackie Chan taught her, but she gets grabbed right at the end. The FBI begins an investigation, but Mr. Han only wants one man on the case: JACKIE CHAN. (Same, TBQH! In real life for all real crimes!)
Over at the police station, Chris Tucker is in big trouble for doing a terrible job on the C-4 sting operation and getting the two dumbass cops shot for no reason. His colleague from the bomb squad, Johnson (Elizabeth Peña, RIP), lectures him about how he wouldn’t fuck up so hard if he had a partner. “I work alone,” he says. “I don’t want no partner, I don’t need no partner.” Dramatic irony! I think!1 Then he sexually harasses her for eight to nine minutes.
The FBI is absolutely incandescently enraged, to a truly baffling degree, about Mr. Han bringing Jackie Chan, an esteemed Hong Kong police detective, to LA to help on his daughter’s kidnapping case, which involves a Chinese crime syndicate. Sounds like maybe he could be helpful, but I’m just a cashier with an English degree!
They’re so mad Jackie Chan is coming, they decide that as punishment they’re going to team him up with the most annoying guy at the LAPD, Chris Tucker. Just normal adult police behavior and excellent mystery-solving when the child of an important diplomat is in mortal danger!
(I am very smitten with the fact that Chris Tucker was one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world, and then one day he was just like, “Sorry, I only like one thing now, and it’s church.” And now all he does is go to church. His only scandal is that he once got a speeding ticket because he was late for church! And he had a $2.5 million tax lien, probably because he gave too much money to church, or he went to church so hard he forgot to pay his taxes. Either way, he’s perfect.)
Chris Tucker’s captain tells him he has a very special classified assignment with the FBI, and at first he’s jazzed, but then he finds out it’s just “babysitting” Jackie Chan. “What the hell am I supposed to do with him, take him to the zoo?” <—another movie I would watch!
I should mention that in this movie there is a LOT of Chris Tucker making fun of Jackie Chan for not speaking English perfectly—most famously, “DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?”—and the only redeeming thing I can say about that is that it didn’t happen as much as I remembered?
Chris Tucker takes Jackie Chan to Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard and is like, “Look familiar? Just like home, ain’t it!?!?” which…SIR.
Jackie Chan escapes on a sightseeing bus, and Chris Tucker chases him all around the town. The FBI will not even let Jackie Chan in to say hi to Mr. Han, and for some reason he does not have his cell phone number? Like, I didn’t have a cell phone in 1998, but they existed! This guy is the Chinese consul! He lives in a castle!
Since they’re both being shut out by the feds, Tucker and Chan decide to try to solve the case themselves by using the buddy cop’s most potent tool: bickering (q.v., Bad Boys II). And for all of its moments that didn’t age well, there’s just no denying that Chris Tucker is a big bright shining star and one of the most naturally funny and watchable human beings to ever live and Jackie Chan is a narcotically lovable model of masculine warmth, and some things are just greater than the sum of their parts on a level that is magic!
Jackie Chan manages to get inside the consulate and tell Mr. Han that word on the street is that “there’s a badass dude in town from Hong Kong” who’s buying up all the guns and bombs. Just then, the kidnapper calls! And, PRAISE JESUS for the comedy, Chris Tucker answers! The kidnapper demands $50 million for the return of Soo Yung. They trace the call to a (pre-revitalization) building in downtown LA, a rotting industrial space that’s actually a Sweetgreens now!
Once they get down there, Jackie Chan has a bad feeling. He tells the FBI, “You must pull your men back!” and they’re like, “GET THIS CLOWN OUT OF HERE!” I truly do not understand the FBI’s animosity toward Jackie Chan, who has been nothing but cordial and professional this whole time, but apparently it would kill them to take him seriously for even one single second. So the building explodes, killing the entire FBI.
Jackie Chan runs into Ken Leung on the street after the explosion and recognizes him from Juntao’s crime crew! Ken Leung looks terrified to see Jackie Chan right there in Los Angeles because Jackie Chan is famously the Dumbledore to Ken Leung’s Lord Voldemort—the only wizard Ken Leung was ever afraid of! He thought he was dealing with Cornelius Fudge over here. Jackie Chan chases Ken Leung down a dank, slimy alley (that alley is actually also a Sweetgreens now!) and up into a haunted theater that is actually Timothée Chalamet’s loft now! Ken Leung gets away, but he drops a mysterious device. A clue!
They go to see Johnson and ask if she knows what this thingy is, and at first she’s like, “Oh, now you want to work with me? Hell no!” Which I’m sympathetic to because there is only ONE woman in Rush Hour, and all she does is be a bitch and get hit on, but SORRY, YOU DO HAVE TO DO THE POLICE JOB FOR WHICH YOU ARE PAID. If you have a problem you should go to HR, Johnson! She tells them it’s some kind of remote control and they leave.
Then they go visit Chris Penn in jail (he survived the car explosion), and he tells them that the mysterious guy buying up explosives is named Juntao, and they can find him at the Foo Chow restaurant in Chinatown. Then there’s a very long scene where Chris Tucker teaches Jackie Chan to dance to “War, What Is It Good For?” and I’m not entirely sure what’s going on or how that was even written into the script, but I don’t mind! Then Jackie Chan buys them a snack from a Chinese food stall and says it’s “eel and camel’s hump,” and it is blowing my mind that “Chinese people eat cra-a-a-a-a-zy stuff!” was a socially acceptable punch line until I was a full adult! That’s wild! The only upside to this xenophobic vignette is that Chris Tucker thinks the eel and camel’s hump is really good, which is probably true!
Chris Tucker gives Jackie Chan his LAPD ID and tells him to pretend to be LAPD if anything goes sideways in the Foo Chow restaurant. Jackie Chan looks at the ID with Chris Tucker’s picture on it and says, “This won’t work—I’m not 6′1″!” And that’s just a gorgeously structured classic joke.
It is absolutely unclear what the fuck their plan is going into this restaurant, but what happens is that Chris Tucker gets a table and asks for camel’s hump, then tells the waitress he wants to see Mr. Juntao. She goes upstairs and we see…Mr. Juntao is Tom Wilkinson!!!!! ADOYEEEEEEEEEE.
Chris Tucker gets caught and Jackie Chan has to rescue him and they end up blowing up the restaurant, which a family of immigrants probably poured their lifeblood into for many years. They get in huge trouble with the FBI because they fucked up the ransom drop, and Mr. Han puts Jackie on a punishment plane back to Hong Kong. Now the ransom is increased to $70 million!
Undeterred, Chris Tucker gets Jackie Chan off the plane by pretending to be an airplane mechanic. (Again, you could just…call a person? Or go into the airport and talk to him at the gate? This is pre-9/11! You don’t need to be sneaking on to tarmacs potentially causing mayhem and death!)
Tom Wilkinson goes to visit his “friend” Mr. Han—what a dick!—and advises him to just pay the ransom. Now the drop is going to take place at a big party for the Chinese art Jackie Chan rescued at the beginning of the movie. Mr. Han has to be the emcee for some reason even though his DAUGHTER IS CURRENTLY KIDNAPPED, and if that ever happens to me and I don’t get at least one day off I’m talking to HR for sure!!!
Chris Tucker causes a scene at the gala and forces Tom Wilkinson to reveal himself as Juntao. Juntao tells Mr. Han that Soo Yung is in a van outside with C-4 strapped to her, so Chris Tucker goes and gets her and starts screaming at Tom Wilkinson to use the remote control to blow her up. Go ahead! Blow up this little kid! “Come on! Push the button!” Tom Wilkinson wavers. YES. YES, CHRIS TUCKER. FORCE THE BLOODTHIRSTY RICH TO PUT A HUMAN FACE ON THEIR VIOLENCE.
Everybody loves “never touch a Black man’s radio” the best, but right here Tom Wilkinson runs away and Chris Tucker yells, “Look at your little punk British ass!” and I can feel it in my pelvic floor. Johnson defuses the bomb. Jackie Chan runs around trying to beat up all the guys AND save all the art, which is a 10/10 formula.
Juntao is getting away with the money suitcase! He’s climbing and climbing the scaffolding up to the roof so he can meet his helicopter and fly away. But he doesn’t understand that Jackie Chan is the fastest ladder-climber in Hong Kong! They grapple on a catwalk, and Tom Wilkinson falls to his death. Then Jackie Chan falls too, but Chris Tucker saves him. NOW THEY ARE TRUE BEST FRIENDS AND THEY GO ON A BEACH VACATION TOGETHER TO HONG KONG.
Rush Hour is a flawed thing, a creature of 1998, and it is not my jurisdiction to dismiss its faults. But complicated love is still love.
RATING: 8/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
1 Wow, this just sent me plummeting down an existential spiral about how if I have one expertise it’s literature and I can’t even remember if Chris Tucker announcing he will never have a partner in a buddy cop movie counts as dramatic irony and my English degree means literally nothing and is merely a class signifier so that a certain kind of person will feel comfortable hiring me for a certain kind of job and wow wow wow I think college might be fake and toxic!