It's been six years since the previous installment of this action-comedy franchise, and Rush Hour 3 comes stumbling into the multiplexes like one of those zombies lumbering through the shopping malls in Dawn of the Dead — a creature operating strictly on autopilot, too dumb to know it's dead.
Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker return as the ethnic odd couple at the center of the action, squabbling buddy-cops who this time find themselves searching for bad guys in Paris — a locale that provides the movie with some much-needed glamour and a handful of mildly amusing gags about French-American relations. The stars gamely reprise all of the moves for which they're best known (and have been this franchise so profitable), but time has not been kind to these men, and the film's script is too lazy to do much beyond paint its heroes into a series of uncomfortable corners. Chan, now well into his 50s, is still an amiable screen presence but is so far past his physical prime that most of the movie's smattering of action scenes fall noticeably flat. As for Tucker, his shtick was becoming tedious six years ago, and his Daffy-Duck-escaped-from-a-minstrel-show routine now often verges on the painful.
Director Brett Ratner tosses us some cool bones from time to time — a cameo by Roman Polanski, a dance number set to Serge Gainsbourg's Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde, some verbal sparring that updates Abbott and Costello's classic "Who's on First?" routine — but most of this is either too little or too late. Even Chan's brief bout with a deadly female assassin, exciting though it is, mainly serves to make us nostalgic for the days when Jackie could do this stuff in his sleep and for days.
Rush Hour 3 (PG-13) Stars Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Hiroyuki Sanada, Youki Kudoh, Max Von Sydow, Yvan Attal, Noemie Lenoir and Zhang Jingchu. Opens Aug. 10 at local theaters. 1.5 stars
