Jackie Chan runs into Ken Leung on the street after the explosion and recognizes him from Juntao’s crime crew! Ken Leung looks terrified to see Jackie Chan right there in Los Angeles because Jackie Chan is famously the Dumbledore to Ken Leung’s Lord Voldemort—the only wizard Ken Leung was ever afraid of! He thought he was dealing with Cornelius Fudge over here. Jackie Chan chases Ken Leung down a dank, slimy alley (that alley is actually also a Sweetgreens now!) and up into a haunted theater that is actually Timothée Chalamet’s loft now! Ken Leung gets away, but he drops a mysterious device. A clue!
They go to see Johnson and ask if she knows what this thingy is, and at first she’s like, “Oh, now you want to work with me? Hell no!” Which I’m sympathetic to because there is only ONE woman in Rush Hour, and all she does is be a bitch and get hit on, but SORRY, YOU DO HAVE TO DO THE POLICE JOB FOR WHICH YOU ARE PAID. If you have a problem you should go to HR, Johnson! She tells them it’s some kind of remote control and they leave.
Then they go visit Chris Penn in jail (he survived the car explosion), and he tells them that the mysterious guy buying up explosives is named Juntao, and they can find him at the Foo Chow restaurant in Chinatown. Then there’s a very long scene where Chris Tucker teaches Jackie Chan to dance to “War, What Is It Good For?” and I’m not entirely sure what’s going on or how that was even written into the script, but I don’t mind! Then Jackie Chan buys them a snack from a Chinese food stall and says it’s “eel and camel’s hump,” and it is blowing my mind that “Chinese people eat cra-a-a-a-a-zy stuff!” was a socially acceptable punch line until I was a full adult! That’s wild! The only upside to this xenophobic vignette is that Chris Tucker thinks the eel and camel’s hump is really good, which is probably true!
Chris Tucker gives Jackie Chan his LAPD ID and tells him to pretend to be LAPD if anything goes sideways in the Foo Chow restaurant. Jackie Chan looks at the ID with Chris Tucker’s picture on it and says, “This won’t work—I’m not 6′1″!” And that’s just a gorgeously structured classic joke.
It is absolutely unclear what the fuck their plan is going into this restaurant, but what happens is that Chris Tucker gets a table and asks for camel’s hump, then tells the waitress he wants to see Mr. Juntao. She goes upstairs and we see…Mr. Juntao is Tom Wilkinson!!!!! ADOYEEEEEEEEEE.
Chris Tucker gets caught and Jackie Chan has to rescue him and they end up blowing up the restaurant, which a family of immigrants probably poured their lifeblood into for many years. They get in huge trouble with the FBI because they fucked up the ransom drop, and Mr. Han puts Jackie on a punishment plane back to Hong Kong. Now the ransom is increased to $70 million!
Undeterred, Chris Tucker gets Jackie Chan off the plane by pretending to be an airplane mechanic. (Again, you could just…call a person? Or go into the airport and talk to him at the gate? This is pre-9/11! You don’t need to be sneaking on to tarmacs potentially causing mayhem and death!)
Tom Wilkinson goes to visit his “friend” Mr. Han—what a dick!—and advises him to just pay the ransom. Now the drop is going to take place at a big party for the Chinese art Jackie Chan rescued at the beginning of the movie. Mr. Han has to be the emcee for some reason even though his DAUGHTER IS CURRENTLY KIDNAPPED, and if that ever happens to me and I don’t get at least one day off I’m talking to HR for sure!!!
Chris Tucker causes a scene at the gala and forces Tom Wilkinson to reveal himself as Juntao. Juntao tells Mr. Han that Soo Yung is in a van outside with C-4 strapped to her, so Chris Tucker goes and gets her and starts screaming at Tom Wilkinson to use the remote control to blow her up. Go ahead! Blow up this little kid! “Come on! Push the button!” Tom Wilkinson wavers. YES. YES, CHRIS TUCKER. FORCE THE BLOODTHIRSTY RICH TO PUT A HUMAN FACE ON THEIR VIOLENCE.
Everybody loves “never touch a Black man’s radio” the best, but right here Tom Wilkinson runs away and Chris Tucker yells, “Look at your little punk British ass!” and I can feel it in my pelvic floor. Johnson defuses the bomb. Jackie Chan runs around trying to beat up all the guys AND save all the art, which is a 10/10 formula.
Juntao is getting away with the money suitcase! He’s climbing and climbing the scaffolding up to the roof so he can meet his helicopter and fly away. But he doesn’t understand that Jackie Chan is the fastest ladder-climber in Hong Kong! They grapple on a catwalk, and Tom Wilkinson falls to his death. Then Jackie Chan falls too, but Chris Tucker saves him. NOW THEY ARE TRUE BEST FRIENDS AND THEY GO ON A BEACH VACATION TOGETHER TO HONG KONG.
Rush Hour is a flawed thing, a creature of 1998, and it is not my jurisdiction to dismiss its faults. But complicated love is still love.
RATING: 8/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
Footnotes
1 Wow, this just sent me plummeting down an existential spiral about how if I have one expertise it’s literature and I can’t even remember if Chris Tucker announcing he will never have a partner in a buddy cop movie counts as dramatic irony and my English degree means literally nothing and is merely a class signifier so that a certain kind of person will feel comfortable hiring me for a certain kind of job and wow wow wow I think
