Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Tom Wilkinson
Director: Brett Ratner
Number of discs: 1
Rating PG-13
Studio: New Line Home Video
DVD Release Date: March 2, 1999
Run Time: 97 minutes
Jackie Chan made his first real debut on the North American screen in 1981 with The Cannonball Run but didn’t really make a splash until the 1998 cop buddy comedy Rush Hour with Chris Tucker. In the chop socky tradition of police buddy movies Rush Hour falls squarely into the middle of the genre walking a well crafted line between action and comedy.
On the eve of the transition of power over Hong Kong from England to mainland China super cop Chief Inspector Lee single handedly takes down the entire criminal organization of criminal mastermind Juntao minus Juntao and his lead henchman. Cut to America where the former governor of Hong Kong is now a consul to the U.S. and his daughter has been kidnapped of course he wants Chief Inspector Lee the Hong Kong super cop on the case. Of course the F.B.I. want nothing to do with a foreign police officer working their case. As it happens the L.A.P.D. have a super cop, James Carter, of their own whose energies they would like to redirect temporarily and he received the plum assignment of escorting Detective Lee with the specific assignment of keeping him out of the investigation.
This fast paced movie is a must for chop socky and Jackie Chan fans alike. It has classic Chan fight sequences combining excellent martial arts with a sense of humour which only Chan can add to a fight. Chris Tucker is surprisingly effective as a costar with Chan playing James Carter the wisecracking, street wise, L.A.P.D. detective who believes that he is working as a special F.B.I. agent only to discover his real assignment is to keep Lee out of the investigation. Naturally Carter and Lee go full bore into the investigation to find the kidnapped little girl and capture Juntao.
Rush Hour is a great movie to while away an hour and a half. It is funny, has a good story and has great action sequences.