I know that nobody but me really cares to draw a comparison with the Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker movies and the Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson movies, but hey it's my blog and if you don't like, write a comment. Sheesh. What was I saying? Oh yeah so this came out after the Shanghai Noon/Knights movies, actually several years after them. I'm not sure if it's because the movies with Chan and Wilson were Westerns of if it's just that Chan and Tucker play off each other better, at least as far as the box office dollar is concerned, but people seemed to want a third Rush Hour film more than they wanted a third Shanghai film. I've got to say that if I were going to pick which series to continue to build on after the second movie, I would have chosen the Rush Hour franchise as well. Oh sure, I would watch more of either, but I'm glad it's this one.
Remember that formula for the Rush Hour movies that I revealed? Well, they only used part of it this time. As soon as you see the elderly, rich, white man, you know he's the bad dude. They completely dropped the other half, of having a third partner who was female and Latina (or any other non-caucasian ethnicity). The third leg, who is comic relief this time around and only saves the two stars almost accidentally at the very end. That didn't work very well for me, and did I mention that he's a white guy? The part of the story he is in takes place in Paris, but Paris is a culturally diverse city.
The movie fell short in other areas as well, but not in the action even though there was noticeably less of it than last time around. Chan and Tucker are on their game as always, but the rest of the story is seriously wanting. And I must admit that I am glad that I only have 3 of these to watch - I couldn't handle doing a Rush Hour 4 based on the trajectory that this installment sends the franchise along.
Rush Hour 3 on IMDb
Showing posts with label Jackie Chan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jackie Chan. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Rush Hour 2 (2001)
If you have a good formula, why mess with it? The sequel to Rush Hour sees Tucker and Chan reprising their roles as an LAPD police detective and Hong Kong Chief Inspector, respectively. They reused a lot of jokes from the first movie, but this time instead of Tucker saying them to Chan, Chan said them to Tucker. There was considerably more action in this film than the first one which was pretty action-packed. This time out they dispensed with long dialogues and any scenes with Tucker or Chan at their respective police stations that weren't also action scenes.
While they didn't have Pena back to reprise her role, they did have the third part of their time played by a Latina actor, Rosalyn Sanchez. She played an undercover Secret Service agent who got quite a bit more screen time than her counterpart in the first film. That was due in no small part to her being an attractive woman that both male leads are interested in, and in no less of a small part due to the main villain's lieutenant being a woman, played by Zhang Ziyi hot off her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Both women got to do multiple action scenes, including, of course, a fight with each other during the climax of the film.
At one point in the film, Carter (Tucker) says to Lee (Chan), "The key to solving a crime is to follow the rich guy. There is always a rich white guy waiting for his piece of the action." And that right there seems to be the formula for these movies laid out in a nutshell. Minority heroes must thwart a rich white villain. I suppose minority is only applicable watching these films in the U.S. and then only in the socio-historical context of the term. Jackie Chan is certainly not a minority in Hong Kong or China. I've got not problem with this formula. I think it's probably true more often than not, and if you say just that's it a rich man behind the plot, I think you'll be very assured of being correct, at least as it applies to these large kinds of crimes.
Rush Hour 2 on IMDb
While they didn't have Pena back to reprise her role, they did have the third part of their time played by a Latina actor, Rosalyn Sanchez. She played an undercover Secret Service agent who got quite a bit more screen time than her counterpart in the first film. That was due in no small part to her being an attractive woman that both male leads are interested in, and in no less of a small part due to the main villain's lieutenant being a woman, played by Zhang Ziyi hot off her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Both women got to do multiple action scenes, including, of course, a fight with each other during the climax of the film.
At one point in the film, Carter (Tucker) says to Lee (Chan), "The key to solving a crime is to follow the rich guy. There is always a rich white guy waiting for his piece of the action." And that right there seems to be the formula for these movies laid out in a nutshell. Minority heroes must thwart a rich white villain. I suppose minority is only applicable watching these films in the U.S. and then only in the socio-historical context of the term. Jackie Chan is certainly not a minority in Hong Kong or China. I've got not problem with this formula. I think it's probably true more often than not, and if you say just that's it a rich man behind the plot, I think you'll be very assured of being correct, at least as it applies to these large kinds of crimes.
Rush Hour 2 on IMDb
Rush Hour (1998)
I guess I was off in my Jackie Chan timeline thinking that these movies, the Rush Hour franchise, came after Shanghai Noon and maybe after Shanghai Knights. Based on the release date of this one, at least the first two came before Shanghai Noon, and maybe all 3. Sigh. I guess Owen Wilson must have seemed more bankable. In some ways, Christ Tucker is a lot like Owen Wilson - they each play very similar characters in most of their movies. But at least Chris Tucker hasn't been foolish enough yet to start doing Woody Allen movies. I guess those are probably a better fit for Owen Wilson.
For an action-comedy-buddy-cop-kung-fu movie, Rush Hour is alright. It is virtually interchangeable with any other Jackie Chan movie where he is co-starring with an American actor, with the possible exception of The Tuxedo which he did with Jennifer Love-Hewitt. Let me straight up with y'all and tell you, I love these movies, not just Jackie Chan, but the whole Hong Kong and American genre of both serious and comedic kung-fu films. They very greatly in quality, but they are all entertaining and have a base production value that is better than the base for other genres, and the top of the genre is on par with the top of other genres.
What is really significant about this movie is it's use non-caucasian actors in all of the key roles. We have Chinese and African-American actors in the lead roles and the only back-up role that actually helps them out (there are more than a few that do not hinder) is a Latina actor. Not only does Elizabeth Pena play a female police detective, she is training to work in the bomb squad - not a traditional female role. All of the bumbling cops and FBI agents are middle-aged and older caucasian actors. I've decided to use 'caucasian' because that is the term the movie uses in the credits, with for example "first caucasian guest", etc. I don't have exact numbers, but this movie did very well at the box office and on VHS and DVD and I'm guessing more than a few of those fans where caucasian. See Hollywood, you can entertain us and get our dollars and still show us a story that looks more like our lives.
Oh, and sorry about all the hyphens, sometimes you just can't help it.
Rush Hour at IMDb
For an action-comedy-buddy-cop-kung-fu movie, Rush Hour is alright. It is virtually interchangeable with any other Jackie Chan movie where he is co-starring with an American actor, with the possible exception of The Tuxedo which he did with Jennifer Love-Hewitt. Let me straight up with y'all and tell you, I love these movies, not just Jackie Chan, but the whole Hong Kong and American genre of both serious and comedic kung-fu films. They very greatly in quality, but they are all entertaining and have a base production value that is better than the base for other genres, and the top of the genre is on par with the top of other genres.
What is really significant about this movie is it's use non-caucasian actors in all of the key roles. We have Chinese and African-American actors in the lead roles and the only back-up role that actually helps them out (there are more than a few that do not hinder) is a Latina actor. Not only does Elizabeth Pena play a female police detective, she is training to work in the bomb squad - not a traditional female role. All of the bumbling cops and FBI agents are middle-aged and older caucasian actors. I've decided to use 'caucasian' because that is the term the movie uses in the credits, with for example "first caucasian guest", etc. I don't have exact numbers, but this movie did very well at the box office and on VHS and DVD and I'm guessing more than a few of those fans where caucasian. See Hollywood, you can entertain us and get our dollars and still show us a story that looks more like our lives.
Oh, and sorry about all the hyphens, sometimes you just can't help it.
Rush Hour at IMDb
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Shanghai Knights (2003)
Okay, first things first. Last night I watched a movie (Savages) starring Aaron Johnson acting opposite a character named Chon. Tonight I watch with Aaron Johnson where he gets third billing (also what he got in Savages) where he plays opposite another character named Chon, this one played by Jackie Chan. The statistical improbability of my doing this seems pretty staggering. I'm guessing in all of the movies that feature Aaron Johnson and a character named Chon (not to mention Aaron Johnson in third billing) these have to be the only two. And then to randomly check them out and watch them back to back? There is some kind of cosmic message here. If only I can figure it out, I think I might be unable to unlock my superpowers. Wait, did I actually write that last bit? I can hear a particular friend calling me a dork already.
How often can you truly say that the movie was exactly what you expected? This is one of those movies. Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson reprise their roles from Shanghai Noon and this time go to London to fight bad guys. It had plenty of martial arts action, much of it with a comic edge as has become Chan's trademark. There is lots of witty banter between the two leads, well banter anyways and much of that entertaining if predictable. There is a pretty girl for Wilson's character to pine over. They mess around a little bit with history doing silly things like having Arthur Conan Doyle working as a detective at Scotland Yard while they are in London, and a street urchin by the name of Charlie Chaplin. Not to mention the best little play on time, when Jack the Ripper mistakenly targets the beautiful Fann Wong playing the character Chan's character's sister. She easily dispatches with him sending him to a watery grave in the Thames. Who knew?
While I thoroughly enjoyed this film, I can see why they didn't make a third. After this, Chan went on to make the Rush Hour movies with Christ Tucker and Wilson tried his hand at a couple of serious films and then teamed up with Eddie Murphy for a comedic spy thriller, before moving on to team-up with Vince Vaughn for a bunch of shitty comedies. ('I left out all of Wilson's wonderful work with Wes Anderson which was going on before he teamed up with Chan and continued after it as well.)
Shanghai Knights on IMDb
How often can you truly say that the movie was exactly what you expected? This is one of those movies. Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson reprise their roles from Shanghai Noon and this time go to London to fight bad guys. It had plenty of martial arts action, much of it with a comic edge as has become Chan's trademark. There is lots of witty banter between the two leads, well banter anyways and much of that entertaining if predictable. There is a pretty girl for Wilson's character to pine over. They mess around a little bit with history doing silly things like having Arthur Conan Doyle working as a detective at Scotland Yard while they are in London, and a street urchin by the name of Charlie Chaplin. Not to mention the best little play on time, when Jack the Ripper mistakenly targets the beautiful Fann Wong playing the character Chan's character's sister. She easily dispatches with him sending him to a watery grave in the Thames. Who knew?
While I thoroughly enjoyed this film, I can see why they didn't make a third. After this, Chan went on to make the Rush Hour movies with Christ Tucker and Wilson tried his hand at a couple of serious films and then teamed up with Eddie Murphy for a comedic spy thriller, before moving on to team-up with Vince Vaughn for a bunch of shitty comedies. ('I left out all of Wilson's wonderful work with Wes Anderson which was going on before he teamed up with Chan and continued after it as well.)
Shanghai Knights on IMDb
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Shanghai Noon (2000)
I figured that after a string of bad comedies, I would go for an action/comedy film that I knew was funnyish and had a happy ending, this latter more for compensating for the last film than the comedies. You can't go wrong with Jackie Chan when it comes to fast-paced martial arts action with some jokes thrown in. This is at least my second time watching this film, maybe my third. Somehow, I've never seen the sequel, so now I will have to go looking for that.
I like Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson together. Wilson's kind of humor and the character's penchant for avoiding actual physical combat make for a nice counterpost to Chan's kung-fu action. Actually, I tend to like Wilson's work with the exception of Midnight in Paris, where I just thought the whole script was bad and all the actors were flat and close to yelling their lines at each other for significant portions of the film. Maybe I just don't understand Woody Allen because I'm not intellectually endowed enough to understand the fine nuances of his work. What I do know is that every time Wilson teams up for a flick with Vince Vaughn, it makes long to see Wilson in another Allen flick. Not that I want to see Wilson typecast, but I like him best in comedies and Wes Anderson films. I realize that these two subsets of the movie world are not mutually exclusive, but I'm not exactly sure how to classify the Anderson films. Parts of them are hilarious and parts are damned depressing and parts are just different, but the total is always a good film.
The real treat in this movie are the women. I was just listening to a news item earlier today about how women are under-represented in film, the magic number being 17% in regards to starring roles and 28% in regards to speaking roles. That doesn't even take into account all of the women that are there as sexual objects only. There certainly are a lot of women running around in skimpy outfits, and far fewer women than men have speaking parts in this fiilm. At least the two female leads (who are in significantly less of the movie than the two male leads) are not simply there as window dressing. Lucy Liu plays Princess Pei Pei, who is strong-willed and after discovering the plight of the Chinese in America stands up to fight for them and protect them. We also have Brandon Merrill as the "Indian Wife" (I kid you not, that is what the credits call her), who literally saves the main male leads bacon every time they are just about to killed. Both women are capable of taking care of business and doing it with grace. Actually, in the mandatory-for-westerns bar brawl, one of the "ladies of the house" is easily the best fighter in the room, with the exception of Chan.
WAtching this has made me nostalgic for other Jackie Chan movies - I think I will have to track down the series he did with Chris Tucker. I'm not sure they made only three of those or if they made a fourth one, but I've only seen two of them, and the second one, I missed a chunk in the middle of it as something came up when I was trying to watch it. I haven't seen a new Jackie Chan movie in a while, but I'm sure that he must still be making them, so nothing is stopping except lack of slots in my holds queue at the library.
Shanghai Noon at IMDb
I like Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson together. Wilson's kind of humor and the character's penchant for avoiding actual physical combat make for a nice counterpost to Chan's kung-fu action. Actually, I tend to like Wilson's work with the exception of Midnight in Paris, where I just thought the whole script was bad and all the actors were flat and close to yelling their lines at each other for significant portions of the film. Maybe I just don't understand Woody Allen because I'm not intellectually endowed enough to understand the fine nuances of his work. What I do know is that every time Wilson teams up for a flick with Vince Vaughn, it makes long to see Wilson in another Allen flick. Not that I want to see Wilson typecast, but I like him best in comedies and Wes Anderson films. I realize that these two subsets of the movie world are not mutually exclusive, but I'm not exactly sure how to classify the Anderson films. Parts of them are hilarious and parts are damned depressing and parts are just different, but the total is always a good film.
The real treat in this movie are the women. I was just listening to a news item earlier today about how women are under-represented in film, the magic number being 17% in regards to starring roles and 28% in regards to speaking roles. That doesn't even take into account all of the women that are there as sexual objects only. There certainly are a lot of women running around in skimpy outfits, and far fewer women than men have speaking parts in this fiilm. At least the two female leads (who are in significantly less of the movie than the two male leads) are not simply there as window dressing. Lucy Liu plays Princess Pei Pei, who is strong-willed and after discovering the plight of the Chinese in America stands up to fight for them and protect them. We also have Brandon Merrill as the "Indian Wife" (I kid you not, that is what the credits call her), who literally saves the main male leads bacon every time they are just about to killed. Both women are capable of taking care of business and doing it with grace. Actually, in the mandatory-for-westerns bar brawl, one of the "ladies of the house" is easily the best fighter in the room, with the exception of Chan.
WAtching this has made me nostalgic for other Jackie Chan movies - I think I will have to track down the series he did with Chris Tucker. I'm not sure they made only three of those or if they made a fourth one, but I've only seen two of them, and the second one, I missed a chunk in the middle of it as something came up when I was trying to watch it. I haven't seen a new Jackie Chan movie in a while, but I'm sure that he must still be making them, so nothing is stopping except lack of slots in my holds queue at the library.
Shanghai Noon at IMDb
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