M: Start the next movie. Start it. I want this to be over so badly. I want it to be over so badly that I might consider watching four movies today just to wash the taste out of my mouth.
M: I don't like this.
I've decided that the Rush Hour movies don't actually qualify as Jackie Chan movies in that the movies that predominantly feature Jackie Chan are, in fact, movies. This is not a movie, this is a protracted Dudley Do-Right episode. Actually, that doesn't quite fit either, as the producers of Dudley Do-Right would never allow a set of minorities to dance for a predominantly white audience with the obvious intention of exploiting their images and correlating racial stereotypes. I'm sorry for continuously dragging us back to the obvious but come on... There's a difference between being hateful (which I can at leat respect in its honesty) and backhandedly smothering the audience with innuendo while hiding behind Chris Tucker because it's okay for us to say it through him. I can't imagine what they would have done if either or both of the characters had been caucasian or at least of the same race. Probably resort to hiring two hispanic lowlives and forcing them to make taco jokes and howl about gringos like some sort of Speedy Gonzalez throwback.
Now that I mention it:
Exerpt from Rush Hour 2:
Carter stops walking when he comes upon Isabella Molina, a stunning brunette, sitting at the bar drinking a glass of champagne. Carter lights her cigarette for her.
Carter: How you doing, baby? My name is Prince Mubutu from Nigeria.
Isabella: Isabella Molina, from San Juan. That seat is taken.
Carter: San Juan! You must know my good friend Pedro Martinez Hernandez Hector Elizondo.
I swear I didn't plan that, it just occurred to me. Isabella was cited as having been Jackie Chan's girlfriend for awhile, but sadly couldn't make it for the third act, likely having enough intellect to sense a sinking ship when she saw it. Apparently the movie made money, but there's more to life than that. This movie has been long forgotten in the annals of shitty cinema and rightly so.
It's three years later the opening scene is, of course, Rush Hour. A accident occurs due to Carter's total negligence (he is directing traffic, and rightfully so) and he immediately sides with the African American driver, using his position of authority to handcuff and bend two latina girls over the hood of their own car detaining them illegally and threatens to charge them with criminal offences less they date him and a friend to be named later, witholding their drivers' licenses for the time being and forcing them to drive illegally for the rest of the day and night. He then steals/appropriates the car (with the two innocent citizens still inside) and takes off down the freeway (in reverse) and engages in a vehicular gunfight.
This is within the first few minutes of opening.
The list goes on and is not worth belaboring. The film needlessly takes place in Paris and reveals Lee's past which nobody believes or cares about and entangles Carter in yet more intruige. Carter, of course, follows his own dick into numerous situations as is the usual and falls perfectly into place with Lee's serious (though completely illegal and unsanctioned) criminal investigations, 'natch. We are reintroduced to Soo-Yung who, by the movies' logical progreession of three years and three weeks exactly after her original kidnapping at eleven must be roughly fourteen. Typically I am not a stickler for adults playing teenagers in shows like Glee or whatever, but this is a grown woman. She kung-fu fights her way yet another kidnapping, and once she is saved the character herself is completely dropped from the plotline and is never heard from again - much as with the first time this happened in the series.
This movie was shit and insulting to the intelligence of itself and all watching audience. The patriotic element was completely shoehorned in and obtuse, with a french cabdriver equating refusing to give fares to blacks in America with refusing Americans fares internationally (please fuck off) at which point Carter pulls a gun on the cab driver and holds it to his head, forcing him to say that America is awesome and sing the American national anthem. Of course, the cabbie loves him for it and offers to be his cabbie full time, no charge, and after Carter tells him 'no chance' he follows Lee and Cater anyway to save them from imminent danger because he so badly wants to be American.
Allow me to take this opportunity to vomit on my shirt. There's so much wrong with this movie I couldn't begin to describe it... Yet again, neither character has learned nor developed, nothing is solved, no protocol has been followed and nothing from any past movie seems to have carried over. Each movie is a standalone version of an extremely simplistic set of plot devices arranged in identical manner in every other bad police movie ever. It's a perfect example of everything that's wrong with American culture and movies in general.
Don't want Rush Hour 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment