A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman
Time destroys all things. I believe that is true the older I get. I find things that I loved when I was younger very rarely have the legs to survive the great lens of time. This week I discovered a film I loved as a child is a racist, sexist, badly edited, badly shot piece of trash. That film is Rush Hour and my god this film has aged so badly.
The brilliance of talking about this is getting Brett “Trash Basket” Ratner. Some films are made a certain way by director on purpose and some are even if the director never intended for that. Rush Hour is everything that Ratner has been accused of or even admitted too. The film seems to relish in demising the strengths of Jackie Chan. It calls him horribly offensive words for terrible bits and you can tell that this is the stuff that got Ratner to sign on. That his love of Jackie’s marshal arts was where his love ended. Ratner’s filmography is littered with films like that look you in the eye and make you deal with what they are but for Rush Hour it hurt so much more.
For a lot of people Rush Hour was their intro to Jackie Chan’s work. (Editors note: Readers interested in good Jackie Chan films should track down First Strike, Drunken Master, and a film Azzam will mention in a second.) He had some cross over hits in America like Rumble In The Bronx but Rush Hour was a god damn monster. This film exploded one of the best film fighters into his largest audience. And what that audience got was some of the worst edited fights in his entire career. Ratner has no idea what to do with this mans skills and seems to just cut at any moment he can. The bar fight at the mid point of the film is so hectic and unable to breathe. A film that literally starts with someone having Chan say the n-word because hey I guess that is funny.
What kills me the most though is what this film does to Chris Tucker. We are in the start of Tarantino month and we will get to talk about the masterpiece that is Jackie Brown. Tucker a year earlier was in Jackie Brown showing the depth of not only his acting ability but his comedic skills. For all of the good will Tarantino gets from Tucker, Ratner then undoes. Tucker is pure bombast in this film. An unlikable screaming head. He is not believable as anyone who could even get through the police academy let alone reach detective grade. Every scene he is in he is finding new ways to screw things up and most of them are not funny. Worst of all this films success convinced Tucker he deserved one of the highest salaries in Hollywood. Tucker’s career dies with this trash franchise.
I feel like this write up is rambling. It hard not to ramble when you see a film you loved as a child is beyond problematic. It is hot trash. A disaster of a film that never deserved its success and did terrible things to the system and the world as a whole. I cannot express how sad this movie is. It wastes everyone’s time and exists now as a monolith of failure. Truly one of the worst pieces of cinema I have ever seen.
Time destroys all things. I believe that is true the older I get. I find things that I loved when I was younger very rarely have the legs to survive the great lens of time. This week I discovered a film I loved as a child is a racist, sexist, badly edited, badly shot piece of trash. That film is Rush Hour and my god this film has aged so badly.
The brilliance of talking about this is getting Brett “Trash Basket” Ratner. Some films are made a certain way by director on purpose and some are even if the director never intended for that. Rush Hour is everything that Ratner has been accused of or even admitted too. The film seems to relish in demising the strengths of Jackie Chan. It calls him horribly offensive words for terrible bits and you can tell that this is the stuff that got Ratner to sign on. That his love of Jackie’s marshal arts was where his love ended. Ratner’s filmography is littered with films like that look you in the eye and make you deal with what they are but for Rush Hour it hurt so much more.
For a lot of people Rush Hour was their intro to Jackie Chan’s work. (Editors note: Readers interested in good Jackie Chan films should track down First Strike, Drunken Master, and a film Azzam will mention in a second.) He had some cross over hits in America like Rumble In The Bronx but Rush Hour was a god damn monster. This film exploded one of the best film fighters into his largest audience. And what that audience got was some of the worst edited fights in his entire career. Ratner has no idea what to do with this mans skills and seems to just cut at any moment he can. The bar fight at the mid point of the film is so hectic and unable to breathe. A film that literally starts with someone having Chan say the n-word because hey I guess that is funny.
What kills me the most though is what this film does to Chris Tucker. We are in the start of Tarantino month and we will get to talk about the masterpiece that is Jackie Brown. Tucker a year earlier was in Jackie Brown showing the depth of not only his acting ability but his comedic skills. For all of the good will Tarantino gets from Tucker, Ratner then undoes. Tucker is pure bombast in this film. An unlikable screaming head. He is not believable as anyone who could even get through the police academy let alone reach detective grade. Every scene he is in he is finding new ways to screw things up and most of them are not funny. Worst of all this films success convinced Tucker he deserved one of the highest salaries in Hollywood. Tucker’s career dies with this trash franchise.
I feel like this write up is rambling. It hard not to ramble when you see a film you loved as a child is beyond problematic. It is hot trash. A disaster of a film that never deserved its success and did terrible things to the system and the world as a whole. I cannot express how sad this movie is. It wastes everyone’s time and exists now as a monolith of failure. Truly one of the worst pieces of cinema I have ever seen.
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