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Here is a producer's dream -- a winning combination. Take the elegant
charming sincerity of Detective Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan), and add the
slouching bodacious insolence of Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) and
you have the screen's newest Dean and Jerry.
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Lee arrives from Hong Kong when his best martial arts student, Soo Yung
(Julia Hsu), is kidnapped. Tough little Soo Yung is the 11-year-old
daughter of Lee's friend Han (Tzi Ma), newly-appointed to the Chinese
Consulate in Los Angeles following the end of British rule. FBI
investigators are already on the kidnapping case, and seek a babysitter
from the LAPD to keep the foreigner out of their hair. The local force
has just the man: the partner nobody wants, loudmouth pain-in-the-neck
Carter.
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When the twain meet, the scene is set for comedy against a background
story of crime on a grand scale as Lee and Carter unravel the links
between the kidnapping, the stockpiling of firearms, a grand Chinese
exposition of priceless antiques, and the roles of Commander Thomas
Griffin (Tom Wilkinson) and dangerous thug Sang (Ken Leung) in the scheme.
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While Lee and Carter size each other up, the black man does the
patronising. Carter speaks pidgin English to Lee, assumes a cup of
noodles would be a thoughtful offer, and takes him to see Grauman's
Chinese Theatre because it's "just like home". Meanwhile the courteous
Lee can't understand Carter's Ebonics, and when he dutifully memorises
Carter's habitual greeting to acquaintances -- "Wassup, my nigger?" -- his
attempt at the local idiom meets with predictable results.
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Chris Tucker, given a wildly irritating character to ham up in the tiring
Bruce Willis vehicle The Fifth Element, was allowed by director Brett Ratner to be
slightly less manic opposite Charlie Sheen in 1997's Money Talks.
But Sheen's habitual heaviness was not the foil the Tucker personality
needed. To take advantage of the irascibility Tucker projects, his
opposite number had to suggest tranquility; to counterpoint the Michael
Jackson marionette jerks, there had to be the fluidity of Fred Astaire.
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Costume designer Sharen Davis materialises this contrast by making Chan as
smooth as Dino in a well-tailored black suit and black shirt, a red tie
his only touch of colour. Bur she makes Tucker as superfly as an LAPD detective
can be in "plain clothes", which in his case involves three different
blues in suit, shirt, and (combined with purple) tie. The suit is
particularly groovy: above low-slung pants, the long, barely shaped
single-breasted jacket has four buttons; short, wide lapels; and sharp,
thick, and narrow shoulder pads.
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Davis has outfitted Tucker before, as costume designer for Money
Talks. Over the last four years, Davis has made something of a
speciality of dressing black actors. After acting as wardrobe supervisor
on Denzel Washington's 1991 Mississippi Masala, she was costume
designer for his 1995 Devil in a Blue Dress. She also conceived
the newer, kindlier Eddie Murphy in last year's Doctor Doolittle,
and before Money Talks designed the costumes for the 1996 cable
TV movie Nightjohn, a story of Southern slaves in the 1830s.
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Now that Chan and Tucker have been introduced and hit it off, box office
figures will soon show how successful the trial marriage is. It's hard to
imagine a quick divorce, when screenwriters Ross LaManna and Jim Kout have
barely scratched the surface of situations in which the pairing of East
and West can strike sparks.
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Details
Rush Hour, by New Line Cinema 1998.
Director: Brett Ratner.
Screenplay: Jim Kout, Ross LaManna.
Cinematography: Adam Greenberg.
Production Design: Robb Wilson King.
Costume Design: Sharen Davis.
Score: Lalo Schifrin.
Cast: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Tom Wilkinson, Elizabeth Peña.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Shane Lewis. "Special Combination: 'Rush Hour'." M/C Reviews 22 Jan. 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/rush.html>.
Chicago style:
Shane Lewis, "Special Combination: 'Rush Hour'," M/C Reviews 22 Jan. 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/rush.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Shane Lewis. (1999) Special combination: 'Rush hour'. M/C Reviews 22 Jan. 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/rush.html> ([your date of access]).
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![[image]](http://posters.imdb.com/Covers/12/08/12.jpg)