Meanwhile, in America, Chris Tucker is friendlily buying some C-4 out of the trunk of Chris Penn’s car. Man, everything in the ’90s was about C-4! I heard the word C-4 more times while writing Shit, Actually than I’d heard it in the last twenty years. But less times than I heard it in the month of April 1998 alone!
Two dumbass cops try to arrest them, but Chris Penn shoots both of them and drives off. Chris Tucker, who is actually an undercover cop (GOOD JOB), shoots the car and the C-4 blows up. Then he’s like, “Yeah!” and does a dance. While I appreciate the dance, this situation does not warrant it!
Mr. Han, now settled down in the Chinese consulate in LA (which is…Downton Abbey?), promises Soo Yung that he will pick her up from school and sends her off with a chauffeur and a bodyguard. On the way, Soo Yung is singing along to Mariah Carey, having the fricking time of her life in the back seat, and for some reason the driver and the guard are rolling their eyes and barfing in their own mouths, and I’m not saying I’m glad that five seconds later they get murdered by Ken Leung, but I think we can all agree that their hands aren’t exactly clean!!!!!
Soo Yung almost gets away, pulverizing the kidnappers’ domes with her wicked kicking just like Jackie Chan taught her, but she gets grabbed right at the end. The FBI begins an investigation, but Mr. Han only wants one man on the case: JACKIE CHAN. (Same, TBQH! In real life for all real crimes!)
Over at the police station, Chris Tucker is in big trouble for doing a terrible job on the C-4 sting operation and getting the two dumbass cops shot for no reason. His colleague from the bomb squad, Johnson (Elizabeth Peña, RIP), lectures him about how he wouldn’t fuck up so hard if he had a partner. “I work alone,” he says. “I don’t want no partner, I don’t need no partner.” Dramatic irony! I think!1 Then he sexually harasses her for eight to nine minutes.
The FBI is absolutely incandescently enraged, to a truly baffling degree, about Mr. Han bringing Jackie Chan, an esteemed Hong Kong police detective, to LA to help on his daughter’s kidnapping case, which involves a Chinese crime syndicate. Sounds like maybe he could be helpful, but I’m just a cashier with an English degree!
They’re so mad Jackie Chan is coming, they decide that as punishment they’re going to team him up with the most annoying guy at the LAPD, Chris Tucker. Just normal adult police behavior and excellent mystery-solving when the child of an important diplomat is in mortal danger!
(I am very smitten with the fact that Chris Tucker was one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world, and then one day he was just like, “Sorry, I only like one thing now, and it’s church.” And now all he does is go to church. His only scandal is that he once got a speeding ticket because he was late for church! And he had a $2.5 million tax lien, probably because he gave too much money to church, or he went to church so hard he forgot to pay his taxes. Either way, he’s perfect.)
Chris Tucker’s captain tells him he has a very special classified assignment with the FBI, and at first he’s jazzed, but then he finds out it’s just “babysitting” Jackie Chan. “What the hell am I supposed to do with him, take him to the zoo?” <—another movie I would watch!
I should mention that in this movie there is a LOT of Chris Tucker making fun of Jackie Chan for not speaking English perfectly—most famously, “DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?”—and the only redeeming thing I can say about that is that it didn’t happen as much as I remembered?
Chris Tucker takes Jackie Chan to Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard and is like, “Look familiar? Just like home, ain’t it!?!?” which…SIR.
Jackie Chan escapes on a sightseeing bus, and Chris Tucker chases him all around the town. The FBI will not even let Jackie Chan in to say hi to Mr. Han, and for some reason he does not have his cell phone number? Like, I didn’t have a cell phone in 1998, but they existed! This guy is the Chinese consul! He lives in a castle!
Since they’re both being shut out by the feds, Tucker and Chan decide to try to solve the case themselves by using the buddy cop’s most potent tool: bickering (q.v., Bad Boys II). And for all of its moments that didn’t age well, there’s just no denying that Chris Tucker is a big bright shining star and one of the most naturally funny and watchable human beings to ever live and Jackie Chan is a narcotically lovable model of masculine warmth, and some things are just greater than the sum of their parts on a level that is magic!
Jackie Chan manages to get inside the consulate and tell Mr. Han that word on the street is that “there’s a badass dude in town from Hong Kong” who’s buying up all the guns and bombs. Just then, the kidnapper calls! And, PRAISE JESUS for the comedy, Chris Tucker answers! The kidnapper demands $50 million for the return of Soo Yung. They trace the call to a (pre-revitalization) building in downtown LA, a rotting industrial space that’s actually a Sweetgreens now!
Once they get down there, Jackie Chan has a bad feeling. He tells the FBI, “You must pull your men back!” and they’re like, “GET THIS CLOWN OUT OF HERE!” I truly do not understand the FBI’s animosity toward Jackie Chan, who has been nothing but cordial and professional this whole time, but
