Rush Hour 3

(movie review)

"We've got a free period coming up next week," our Japanese teacher said. "What would you like to do?"
We had spent the last couple free periods watching Japanese anime, and it seemed a bit of a waste to watch videos every time. (After all, we could do that in on our own time if we wanted.) But no one could think of an alternative idea. Or at least no one could think of an acceptable alternative idea.

"Let's play basketball," someone said.
"We can't," the teacher answered. "There's no gym in the school."

"Let's study Japanese history," someone else said.
"What?" the teacher responded. "You don't want to do that, do you? These free periods are supposed to be for something fun and to break up the monotony." (Well, personally I would have been more than happy to have spent the time studying Japanese history, but I kept my mouth shut. I figured there was no reason to make everyone else in the class suffer just because I was a geek.)

"Let's do Karaoke," said someone in the back.
"Come on, get serious," the teacher said. "We can't leave the school campus, and I certainly can't take you to a karaoke place."

So, in the end we came back to the idea of watching a video. The question was now what video to watch.
After reading Donald Richie's book on Japanese film I have a large viewing list to work through, but again I kept my mouth shut. I figured I could work through my own viewing list on my own time, and I wanted to see where the class discussion was going.

The class, being composed of 95% Chinese students, soon began asking to see a Jackie Chan film.
"We can't see a Jackie Chan film," our teacher said. "That has nothing to do with studying Japanese."

"It would if we watched it with the Japanese dub on," someone said.
"And with the Japanese subtitles to practice kanji," another student said.

Surprisingly, our Japanese teacher gave in on this. The Chinese students said they wanted to see the Jackie Chan movie, "The Forbidden Kingdom", and our teacher agreed to go out and rent it.

The next week, she came in with a different video. "'The Forbidden Kingdom' isn't out in Japan yet," she said. "So I rented 'Rush Hour 3' instead."

Aha! An American movie. The linguistic tables have turned.
...But of course we watched it in Japanese. "To tell the truth," our Japanese teacher said apologetically as she set the DVD settings, "I would prefer to watch it in English myself. The dubbing is always so over the top and unnatural. But, this is Japanese class."

(This is a common complaint. When Shoko used to watch marathon sessions of "The O.C.", her eyes used to get so tired from reading all the subtitles so she would sit right in front of the TV.
"That's bad for your eyes," I would say. "Just switch it to the Japanese dub. I could use the Japanese practice anyway."
"I can't stand the dub," Shoko said. "In Japan they use professional anime voice actors for all the dubbing, and the voice actors are always trying to show off how dramatic they can be so that everything is too over done. It always takes me out of the story.")

And so we began watching the Japanese dub of "Rush Hour 3".

It was interesting watching a Jackie Chan movie with a room full of Chinese students. I never realized before how much they loved him. Every time he leaped across a building or did some dramatic acrobatic feat, the room would erupt into cheers, and someone would turn to me and say something like, "Wow, isn't he great?"
I guess this shouldn't have been a surprise to me. I've been living in Japan long enough to know that Ichiro, Watanabe Ken, or any Japanese person that's able to take the world stage automatically becomes a national hero. (In America we think it's only natural that our celebrities are world celebrities. In other countries, they don't take international stardom for granted).

The opening scene takes place in New York, and shows Chris Tucker trying to direct traffic and screwing up horribly. Several of the Chinese students turned to me and asked, "Is America really like this?" They continued to ask this question throughout the New York scenes.
My Chinese classmates were half asking in jest, but during my time in Japan I have spent many hours trying to convince Japanese people that the America I grew up in was very different from the America portrayed in Hollywood. It's a losing battle. I'm sure anyone who's lived overseas can vouch for the fact that Hollywood often acts as our nation's cultural ambassador more than we might wish it to.

Then, our heroes capture a would be assassin, and bring him in for questioning, only to discover he only speaks French.
--At this point the attention turned to the two French students in the class. But because the original French had been redubbed by a Japanese voice actor trying to speak French, the pronunciation was so bad the French students couldn't make it out.

(When they get into dubbing in this country, they dub right across the board. I'm not sure if there's some sort of technical reason for this (like maybe it's too difficult to mix voice tracks) or if they just get carried away, but even the foreign languages are redubbed with Japanese voice actors attempting to approximate foreign languages. Even Japanese itself is redubbed. I was watching the TV show "Heroes" a few months back, and discovered that on the Japanese dub they had even redubbed the Japanese parts---And in fact in this movie as well. In "Rush Hour 3" there was some Japanese in the original that someone felt the need to dub over).

Then, our heroes travel to France, where all sorts of French stereo-types are made fun of, and everyone has a good laugh at the French students. Then they get into a taxi cab, and the French taxi cab driver goes off on an anti-American rant about how America lost in Vietnam and are losing in Iraq. Everyone (including the Vietnamese student) looks to me for a rebuttal, but I just shrugged my shoulders.

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The first "Rush Hour" movie was an instant classic with my roommates back at Calvin. My roommates thought it was the funniest thing ever, and there was a period of a couple months where it was being shown in our apartment just about every day.
I did my best to avoid watching it because of my "no movies during the school year" policy, but I couldn't help but be sucked in a few times.

"Rush Hour 2" came out while I was in Japan, and went out and rented it at the time because it reminded me of my old college roommates. When I next met up with them, I tried to talk to them about the movie, only to discover none of them had actually bothered to see the sequel, and their movie tastes had moved on.

I was a bit surprised they felt the need to make a "Rush Hour 3". For one thing "Rush Hour 2" was simply mediocre. For another, it's been 10 years since the first "Rush Hour" came out. (According to wikipedia, the delay was because of development hell).

However this movie is not bad at all. It's not the best movie ever made by a long shot, but it's a very pleasant waste of time. The action sequences are surprisingly good for a cliche buddy movie. And what's more there's plenty of action. There's very little dull moments in this movie.
Chris Tucker's not quite as fresh as he was in the late 90s, but he's funny enough to keep this movie entertaining.

....The plot makes absolutely no sense whatever, but you can't win them all.

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The PC liberal in me can't resist making a couple quibbles with this movie. Stop me if I'm being too sensitive.

Despite the fact that my Chinese classmates took great pride in Jackie Chan being an American movie star, it was interesting to note that throughout this whole movie Jackie Chan never battled a Caucasian once. Despite being in New York and Paris, Jackie Chan was matched up exclusively against Asian thugs and Asian femme fatales. And from what little I remember about "Rush Hour" 1 & 2 (and granted it's been a long time since I've seen either movie), it was the same. Jackie Chan was in America, but he spent the whole time battling other Asians.

Do you suppose there was a internal Hollywood memo floating around somewhere that read: "Asian action hero? Great idea. But make sure he's not taking down blond haired blue eyed Americans. That could alienate the Midwest movie goers. Match him up against other Asian bad guys."

As for the Asian femme fatales in this movie (and the previous sequel, Rush Hour 2): is it just me, or are Asian femme fatales portrayed as more psychotic in Hollywood movies than their Western counterparts.

Also:
Edwin Starr's famous anti-war anthem closes out this movie, which I was always happy to hear. They did however cut the song off before any of the verses. And it wasn't really a smooth fade out at all, but rather a pretty abrupt cut right as Edwin Starr is gearing up to go into all the reasons he is against war.

Of course the first "Rush Hour" movie gave this song plenty of play, so I can't complain too much. But of course the first "Rush Hour" movie was 10 years ago, before we were fighting a war in Iraq. Do you suppose there was another Hollywood memo reading: "We don't want to be perceived as taking an opinion on the War one way or another. You can play the chorus if you want, but make sure you cut out before the verses come on."?

Link of the Day
Money Money Money
Y’know it’s funny that all of the Republicans who are wetting themselves about Barack Obama rejecting public financing seemed to have no problem with huge financial disparities when they were the ones outspending the Democrats in 2000 and 2004. Hell, at the time, they were the ones who were the loudest opponents of campaign finance laws, insisting that giving corporate interests the ability to buy elections was a “free speech” issue. Now that the tables are turned, however, they can’t complain loudly enough about Obama’s apparent “hypocrisy” for rejecting public financing after previous expressing support for it. Needless to say, it’s hard to take someone’s complaints of hypocrisy seriously when they’re committing and even more egregious form of insincerity by conveniently failing to mention that John McCain not only backed out on a binding promise to accept matching funds in the primary, but that in not binding himself to the public financing commitments that he made, John McCain’s campaign is breaking the law.

Rush Hour 3: Movie Review (Scripted)