Rush Hour 3, the junky, clunky, grimly unfunny follow-up to the marginally better Rush Hour 2, and the significantly finer Rush Hour, isn't the worst movie of the summer. But it's an enervating bummer nonetheless, largely because it shows so little respect for its two likable stars and its audience. Once again Jackie Chan (成龍) and Chris Tucker, playing seriously unlikely detectives, bumble and slog through muddled setups, graceless action, crude jokes and even cruder stereotypes, sacrificing themselves on the altar of the director Brett Ratner's vulgar success.
The arc of Ratner's career can be summed up entirely with numbers, namely the US$247,538,093 that Rush Hour raked into theaters worldwide; the US$328,883,178 that Rush Hour 2, made across the globe; and the mind-boggling (especially if you saw the movie) US$453,796,824 earned, again worldwide, by X Men: The Last Stand. These figures, from Variety, don't include DVD revenue, cable sales and the like, but you get the big tautological picture: Ratner has a gift for making products that companies can sell to the public, which is why he makes products. Even so, given the anonymity of these products, the credit "A Brett Ratner Film" seems largely ceremonial.
There's nothing new about any of this, yet it does bear repeating every so often, even in a movie review. Like a lot of big-ticket productions Rush Hour 3 flooded into US theater in August (gobbling up more than 3,700 of the nation's approximately 38,000 screens) and, because of its ubiquity and its brawny advertising muscle, pulled in a sizable chunk of change. Bad reviews won't make a lick of difference to its box office, though franchise fatigue might. Chan's and Tucker's star power has waned in the six years since Rush Hour 2.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF WARNER BROTHERS
Part of the reason I've strayed from discussing Rush Hour 3 is that there's not much to say about the actual movie. It's a generically crummy action flick. It's ugly. It's noisy. It's stupid. And unlike, say, Transformers, which sells militarism alongside children's toys, it doesn't raise hackles, much less blood pressure. Thus, as an object, Rush Hour 3 offers precious little of interest, although it does take a special kind of talent to make Paris, where some of the story takes place, look this uninviting. There, rather depressingly, Roman Polanski shows up wearing a mustache and a smirk to harass Chan's and Tucker's characters, who are globetrotting after some villains. Max von Sydow also pops up for a few scenes, a reminder that Ingmar Bergman really is dead.
Chan and Tucker don't get to wiggle off the hook entirely. But people have to make a living, even movie stars, and there are limited opportunities for an aging Hong Kong martial-arts giant and an eccentrically talented black comic actor. Given how much pleasure both have provided over the years, especially Chan, here's hoping they were paid by the truckload.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
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This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built