Rush Hour 3 Review

Unfortunately for fans of "Rush Hours" 1 and 2, "Rush Hour 3" proves a three-quel too far, despite the participation of franchise director Brett Ratner. The plot reunites Detectives Carter (Chris Tucker) and Lee (Jackie Chan) and sends them off to Paris in order to foil a conspiracy. Along the way, they meet a French cop with a fondness for deep cavity searches (Roman Polanski), a female assassin with a deadly knife-concealing fan (Youki Kudoh), an anti-American cab driver (Yvan Attal) who learns to embrace his inner American, and a beautiful woman who may be the key to the conspiracy (Noemie Lenoir).

The poorly-conceived plot is basically just an excuse for a series of borderline offensive jokes and lacklustre set-pieces. Unfortunately, all of this lacks the spark of the previous two films and it really feels as if everyone concerned is just going through the motions. The jokes aren't funny and Jackie Chan isn't even capable of doing all his own stunts anymore - the stand-in work is both obvious and embarrassing in places.

Tucker has clearly spent the interim between 2 and 3 eating pies - there's a reason you don't see him run very often in this film - and he's also even more irritating than he was in the first two films, if that's possible. On top of that, the script is so bad that there's actually a point where everyone involved just gives up and wraps everything up in one ludicrous final scene.

That said, there are a couple of decent action sequences and the fight scenes are inventive, particularly the climactic sequence set in the Eiffel Tower. It's just a shame the film-makers didn't put as much effort into the script. In other words, don't rush to see it.