Hacker Cinema
Rush Hour
1998 · Film · 97 min
Part of Rush Hour Collection
Directed by Brett Ratner
When Hong Kong Inspector Lee is summoned to Los Angeles to investigate a kidnapping, the FBI doesn't want any outside help and assigns cocky LAPD Detective James Carter to distract Lee from the case. Not content to watch the action from the sidelines, Lee and Carter form an unlikely partnership and investigate the case themselves.
3 positive1 negative11 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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18 comments on Hacker News
I dunno, I would think AT LEAST Jackie Chan is a household name due to the Rush Hour movies, and for anyone who grew up watching Hong Kong action flicks, they'd probably also know Jet Li at least, and Donnie Yen, Michelle Yeoh, and maybe Bolo Yeung and Sammo Hung too.
Eddie Murphy talked about the three movies that he regretted turning down:
- Ghostbusters (he was filming Beverly Hills Cop at the same time)
- Rush Hour
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit
> these weird complaints about diversity in modern movies
You're twisting my words to move the narrative goalposts. Nobody complained about diversity in movies (otherwise I wouldn't have praised Rush Hour and Blade). The complaint was about US movies today being solely built around a toxic form of diversity checkbox ticking, masquerading as entertainment, which is not interesting to anyone outside the US crowds of movie goers who care more about seeing $CURRENT_DAY political issues in their movies instead of recognizing entertainment as being fantasy escapism, which causes the US to loose soft power abroad, and judging by how they flop at the box office, US viewers aren't interested in paying for this slop either.
>most of your good old days classics examples are in fact "slop based on established IP".
Source that they're slop?
>but Star Wars prequels given as a positive example while complaining about 30 year old IP slop?
The prequels were considered shit at the time because they were compared to the original masterpieces, but compared to the modern Star Wars that Disney shits out today, they're basically gold. They ended up ageing like wine due to how bad we have it today.
>You may also have missed the subtle subtext in Star Wars about fascism.
What's your point here?
Except American movies(and entertainment in general) haven't been good for about 10 years now, it's all slop based on established IP from 20-30 years ago.
When I was a kid growing up in the post communist 90-00s, we were going nearly weekly to the cinema to watch the latest American movies: Blade, Shrek, Toy Story, The Matrix trilogy, LotR trilogy, American Pie, Batman trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Fast & Furious, X-Men, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Scary Movie, Rush Hour, etc
We couldn't get enough of US entertainment, while now everyone here avoids the new US releases like the plague since it's only cash grabs injected with $CURRENT_DAY identity politics, diversity box ticking based on focus group testing, resulting in sterile, predictable, zero-humor, zero-edge, zero-creativity slop that's not even worth pirating.
Americans have no idea how much soft power they lost worldwide by forcing their identity politics and ideologies in entertainment. Japanese anime and Koran movies and TV shows now run rings around the US entertainment industry.
How in the world can you have an essay about well-choreographed fight scenes and not even mention Jackie Chan?!?
While he mostly worked in Hong Kong, he had a strong cult following in the US and eventually came to Hollywood. He made a number of successful action-comedy films in America, starting with Rush Hour in 1998, one year before The Matrix come out.
Certainly the Matrix had a huge effect, that's undeniable, but Jackie Chan was very influential as well.
While he rose to fame shooting films in Hong Kong, he had a strong cult following in the US that eventually brought him to Hollywood, where he had a successful run of films made a number of successful films, such as Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon.
I miss the cheesy but wholesome comedies and parodies of the 1990s and 2000s: Anger Management, Rush Hour, The Cable Guy, American Pie, Scary Movie, Bruce Almighty, Eurotrip, Tropic Thunder, Hot Shots, Borat, Idiocracy, How High, White Chicks, etc.
We can't have any like those in this age because someone on Twitter will claim to be offended. Good thing to back-up those old gems as well before they get cancelled/edited to comply with modern sensibilities.
Movies like that are often only canonized as "good" in retrospect, after there's been time for them to marinate in the wider culture and have some consensus form around their significance and general quality. Around the time of American History X, your local theater probably would have been showing Antz, Rush Hour, The Rugrats Movie, and There's Something About Mary.
Rush Hour 1 is a fun movie, the others are meh. They are not even close to the quality of some of the Hong Kong movies. Also Tucker gets pretty old quickly.
Rumble in the Bronx is an insane movie that is US based, better then Rush Hour.
> The lack of respect Chan gets in the west is a travesty IMO.
I don't think he gets lack of respect. Directors have studied his stuff for years. Anyone who has watched his movies has been impressed for years. However, let's face it, the average person didn't have any inkling who he was until Rush Hour.
As for Jackie Chan's work, the problem is that you get injured. No stuntmen in their right mind would do the kind of stunts he did. A slight change to the angle of several of his bad landings and Jackie Chan isn't a star but has been dead or crippled for 20 years.
As for his fight choreography, the primary problem is that it takes time, and that's something that Hollywood simply will not abide. You see this in the way Hollywood does music, CGI, etc. Everything is about cranking the handle and getting things done quickly, if there is craft, well, that's a happy accident but certainly not required.
> lack of respect Chan gets in the west
What? He's one of the biggest breakout stars from Hong Kong cinema in Western History. Is a household name, and starred in scores of movies during his career, including a 3 picture comedy/action movie series (Rush Hour), then went on to reboot a beloved 80's action story alongside the son of one of Hollywoods biggest names.
He also had his own cartoon for a while.
How the hell do you get "lack of respect" from his shining career?
I liked Rush Hour, but according to IMDB he's been quoted as saying those are some of his least favorite movies.
Rush Hour 1 through 3 have long been some of my favourite movies!
If we're getting into Jackie Chan movies, though, one cannot leave out Drunken Master
He made a crap ton of movies in China.
Heck rush hour 1-3 probably paid off that jet easily
No plan, he admits defeat. "I know I'm not young anymore. I cannot continue to make Rush Hour 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. How can I continue [to] do this kind of funny face".
Later he states that if he stays in the industry he will no longer act. "If I'm [to] continue on in the film industry," Jackie says, "I have to change. Otherwise, you gone. You see—in Japan. Korea. America. China. Hong Kong. How many action star all gone? Only few can stay. Stallone's different. He's a legend. Other action stars already gone.
"So that's why I'm looking for different script, different character, different Jackie Chan. I want the audience look at Jackie Chan as an actor. Not the action star. Actor who can fight. Look at Clint Eastwood. If he continue to 'Make my day'? Gone. So he change to directing. He change some other things. Look at Al Pacino. Robert De Niro. I wanna be an Asian Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino."
Drunken Master is one of my favourite movies of all time! That said, I still love the Rush Hour series.
I agree with the article that even with Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon, Western audiences really haven't seen the full Jackie Chan palette of tricks and stunts. Some of the stuff he did in movies like Police Story, Armor of God and Drunken Master is amazing. Supercop (Police Story 3, per Wikipedia) has some of the most astonishing stunt work I've ever seen, and Michelle Yeoh matches him stunt for stunt.
No, what will happen is that sometime in the next 50 years a DMCA request will coming for removal of those films due to images or music on them. One is entitled "Rush Hour" so will probably be caught up in a sweep for copies of the Jackie Chan film of the same name.
Or youtube will go out of business (like the original google video). Or in 5 years the people who posted the videos will pull them down as their business model changes.
If you want to see it already on youtube create a playlist of videos especially music videos. After about a year 10% of them will have been removed.
War! Huh!
(To actually contribute something to this previously useless posting(self); "What is it good for?" "Absolutely nothing" is from Edwin Starr's song "War". I think I first heard it in the movies "Rush Hour".. (Yes, I'm young I guess))