Rush Hour

Forget its racist stereotypes and uninspired plot lines and half of Brett Ratner's film is a helluva lot of fun. That half stars Jackie Chan doing what he does best, kicking butt. Too bad the lesser half of this buddy movie, Chris Tucker, makes you feel you're stuck in gridlock.

Chan's Inspector Lee is a Hong Kong policeman brought to the US by his long-time friend Consul Han after Han's daughter, on her first day of school in the United States, gets kidnapped by terrorists. Social commentaries on safety in US education aside, Han trusts only Lee to save the girl. Of course, the FBI won't have anything to do with Lee, so the feds assign Tucker's Carter, a wise-cracking LAPD detective, to babysit him. Of course, Carter, bored with his assignment, embarks on a solo quest to find Han's daughter. And of course, Carter at first resists Lee's assistance before the pair bridge the cultural divide and bring matters to a tidy B-movie resolution.

It's too bad that Chan's brilliantly choreographed martial-arts escapades (and Ratner's considerable technical prowess) are mired in Tucker's mugging. All Rush Hour proves is that, no matter how great a martial artist he is, Chan can't negotiate an off-ramp from an American traffic jam. At the Harbour Mall, Holiday, Showcase, Tri-Boro, and Woonsocket cinemas.

-- Ian Menchini