Rush Hour 3 DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

I remember talking a lot of smack about this movie before it came out. I thought it was going to be just horrendous. Chris Tucker hadn't made ANYTHING in the 6 years since Rush Hour 2, which wasn't as good as Rush Hour, and, Jackie Chan hadn't really been on a hot streak since then either. I actually saw another movie the weekend this opened, almost purely out of spite for this one. That flick was Stardust, which turned out to be one of my favorite movies of the year, so I guess I owe a round of thanks to this movie for that. Surprisingly, now that I've seen it, it wasn't really quite as bad as the gutteral expectations I had for it... but it still doesn't rise that far up.

The biggest surprise for me was Chris Tucker, who I thought gave one of his best performances to date. It seems his lengthy hiatus matured him, and he's much more toned-down than his usual raucous self. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of Tucker's trademark, off-the-wall moments (some are good news, some aren't), but it just seems that his performance, overall was much steadier than his usual combustable self. Perhaps he realizes that he doesn't have to try as hard here, but whatever it is, it really works, and his chemistry with Jackie Chan is still intact. Chan delivers in the action aspect, but his performance isn't his greatest. There were two great, but VERY small performances from Philip Baker Hall reprise his role as Tucker's police captain and director Roman Polanski as a snide French police captain, but the rest of the supporting performances were fairly flat. I did dig Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada as the villain Kenji, but his role should've been bigger as well. Also, if you've seen the first Rush Hour, one bit of casting, just on its own, given the similarity of characters (played by different actors) and this new actor himself, should give away a lot in the movie.

The movie really falters from the script from Jeff Nathanson. It really seems that the biggest mistake here is that Nathanson knows this material too well, from writing Rush Hour 2, because the material is just so damn predictable if you've seen the first two movies. This might have had a better chance if a writer with a fresh take on the series was brought in for the new film, but this movie didn't really bring a whole lot of new material to the table. It's basically just the same two guys doing the same things. Sure, both these characters have changed or "evolved" but that sort of material is just breezed right past us, almmost as if they want to get back to doing their same old song and dance that we're used to seeing. By the way, we do literally see that same song, and that same dance, at the very end.

I'm surprised I'm saying this, but the best part of Rush Hour 3 is Chris Tucker. He really delivers a pretty damn good performance here, and I'm looking forward to see what he has up his sleeve next... provided it's not another of these with Jeff Nathanson writing the script. As far as I see it, this whole series has gone downhill each time. Lets hope they've reached as low as they want to go.

The first disc just has a Trailer and the movie and the second disc only has a few features... but they are rather time-consuming. There is a dopey Outtake Reel that only lasts a few minutes and isn't really that funny, most likely because they used all the good ones in the obligatory gag reel during the end credits. Next are seven Deleted/Alternate Scenes. The "alternate" scenes aren't that different than the normal scenes, but the deleted ones, surprisingly, are all right. We even get a glimpse at Rosalyn Sanchez reprising her role as Isabella from Rush Hour 2 in the alternate ending, which works a LOT better than the dopey ending we get in the movie. Oh well.

Making Rush Hour 3 is next, and it's broken down into five featurettes. the first, The Story, The Script, and it's your regular glad-handing feauturette with all the big players (Tucker, Chan, director Brett Ratner and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson) talking about how much they loved the film and blah blah blah. Casting the Rush starts out with Ratner and Tucker talking about how in tune with each other they are. Then we go on to Ratner talking about Chan, and then about Max von Sydow, and then about Roman Polanski and then about Yvan Attal and basically everyone else. It's Ratner talking, and then the other person talking, and, yeah, blah blah blah. Basically every actor with a speaking role is covered, and some just seem like overkill. About half is decent, and half isn't in this 25-minute featurette. Teaming Up is basically the same thing as the last featurette, only with Ratner and everyone else talking about various crew members. They talk about the costume designer, director of photography, stunt coordinators, special effects supervisor, visual effects supervisor and a bunch of other crew members. At this point, I'm really just sick of hearing Brett Ratner talking... Creating the Rush: Scene by Scene has more of Ratner talking about how they do a few different random scenes, and it really doesn't need to be as in-depth as it is. It really just seems that Brett Ratner requires a ton of time just to talk about his own movie. He's in the same clothes during the whole thing, and he was probably just sitting there for hours blabbing about his work. If we don't see him talking about the movie, we see him on the set giving his direction. It's really quite rare if you see don't see or hear Ratner in any part of these things. Cuts, Sound and Music is last, and it talks about editing and, well, sound and music and when this whole thing is over with, it is abou the same runtime of the movie, clocking in at 87 minutes. I don't know. Maybe I don't think 87 minutes worth of stuff is necessary for something that isn't very good...

Visual Efects Reel shows some effects models and then does some side-by-side stuff showing the effects matching up to the actual movie. Most of these are from the scenes at the Eiffel Tower, and this is only two minutes long, so you might as well check it out.

Le Rush Hour Trios Production Diary is the last one, and it's 26 random video diaries that runs a little over an hour and takes you all the way from pre-production to the film's Hollywood premiere. We get some pretty good stuff here, as it's not the structured sort of featurettes we've seen from the rest of this disc, but, like the rest of this disc, it gets a bit long-winded. Still, some of the best stuff is on here.

The film is presented in the widescreen format, in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

The sound is handled trhough either one of two formats. You can have this in the Dolby Digital 5.1 EX format or the DTS-ES 6.1 format.

They kind of go back to the old school with the packaging here. They have a slipcover that has that animation/3-D kind of material where you move the box and it looks like they're moving. Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are just looking normal in one shot, then you move it and Tucker is throwing a punch and putting on one of his crazy fighting faces, while Chan gives a smirk. The regular case has that normal shot of them on the front, and on the back we get some a critic quote, a brief synopsis, some random pictures, a special features listing and a really large billing block and tech specs because they obviously couldn't find much else to say about this.

I'd check this out once just to see Tucker come back into form, but I wouldn't advise buying this, because once is quite enough. I'm sure you know some buddy who bought this on the first day because they loooooove this series, so borrow it from them for a day and save yourself some money.