Rush Hour 2 Review by Beth Ann Griese

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Starring	Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, John Lone, Ziyi Zhang
Director	Brett Ratner
Year	2001
The Scoop	The second movie picks up where the first left off; now the odd couple of law enforcement go to Hong Kong and do pretty much the same thing as the first movie. Which means if you liked the first one, this one will make you laugh, too. If you didn't... don't bother.
What it's worth		Matinee (Good way to spend a couple of hours.)

Detective Lee (Chan) and Detective Carter (Tucker) are on the "vacation" in Hong Kong that they had ended the first movie with. Lee, though, is turning it into a working vacation, much to Carter's disgust. But things get a little more serious when a big-time mobster is involved with bombing the American consulate and forging huge amounts of money, and Carter and Tucker are again trying to mesh their different styles to capture nasty crooks.

Rush Hour 2 revolves around the tried-n-true odd couple formula. Two very different people find just a little bit of common ground to stand on and meet their common goals. Here, the trustworthy, dependable, butt-kicking Lee and the loud-mouthed, wise-cracking, irreverent Carter's common ground is that they actually like each other. And the whole movie hinges on this: if we don't believe that they like each other, the film is dead in the water. But Chan and Tucker sell it; mostly, based on the outtakes we see at the end, because the two really do like working together just like their characters are supposed to. I don't mean to insult Tucker or Chan's acting ability - maybe they'd be completely capable of portraying camaraderie even if they hated each other. But that's not put to the test, because they each seem to show the exact amusement/bemusement at the other that their roles call for.

There is one noticeable change between the first Rush Hour and this one. In the first movie the big jokes were when one character wandered into the other's territory. Lee tried to sing and dance, and Carter tried to fight, with not-very-impressive but pretty funny results. This time, Lee can sing (sometime in the first five minutes) and Carter can pull some fighting moves, but each sticks mostly to his own territory. Chan gets a few scenes where he does his trademark mixture of kung fu and acrobatics, which are impressive as always but not highlighted enough in this film, drat it all. Tucker spends most of the movie wisecracking, which is sometimes funny (especially his reaction when Chan takes a fight onto a bamboo scaffolding) and sometimes a little painful (like his insistence on providing a gangster karaoke bar with his Michael Jackson impersonation). The enjoyment of watching each learn a little of the other's skills is missing this time around.

Another place where the second Rush Hour doesn't match up to the first is in the other tried-n-true device the first movie used: the fish-out-of-water comedy. The first movie featured Lee trying to adjust to American culture and law enforcement. So this time around, we should be focusing on Carter's adjustment to Hong Kong. Except that Carter isn't interested in adjusting. He can't figure out why Hong Kong isn't adjusting to him. And before you know it, we're swept back to the States on a very thin lead, as if the movie producers realized, too, that this device was never going to last an entire film.

This theme does keep popping up in the movie, though: Lee almost invariably is the only one who manages to get anything accomplished, because he understands why things are happening. Which kept bringing a nagging question to my mind while I was watching the movie: Is Carter really a cop? He carries a badge, and just once makes reference to crime-fighting. But other than that, I can't imagine that guy functioning as a real detective. He's completely blind to anything that goes on except for his own smart-aleck remarks and the occasional need to hit someone who's a bad guy.

If you enjoyed Rush Hour, you'll find entertainment in the fast fights and faster mouths in Rush Hour 2, even though it doesn't do as good a job as the first one. If Rush Hour's humor appalled you, or you decided to not even bother with it, you don't have to think twice about seeing the second one. It won't be worth the time you'd spend walking into the theater.

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