?Brings delight?: why Rush Hour is my feelgood movie
There?s many a time in a grocery store or CVS when Fantasy by Mariah Carey comes on, and all I can think of is Rush Hour. It?s 1997, and in the backseat of a car the Chinese consul?s daughter Soo-yung (played by an 11-year-old Julia Hsu) belts sweet fantasy in the only way a Mariah song can be belted, her stone-faced bodyguards in front wading through Los Angeles traffic. To 10-year-old me, who sang about heartbreak and desire with similar vigor in front of her immigrant parents, it was a quintessentially American moment. There?s pure joy in Soo-yung?s face before we cut to the scene at large, as the car is directed to the side. A police car swings in front of them and a man gets out, unflinchingly shoots the bodyguards and abducts Soo-yung.
And thus the crux of the plot in this 1998 action comedy is set in motion. For the rescue-important-person?s-daughter mission, the director, Brett Ratner, offers us the Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan (who by then had gained some US recognition for Rumble in the Bronx) and Chris Tucker (who was already known for House Party 3 and Friday) to save the day.
Chan plays Chief Inspector Lee, a strait-laced detective from Hong Kong coming to the US for the first time to find his friend the consul?s daughter, while Tucker is James Carter, a Black officer who skirts rules, smooth-talks and has ambitions beyond the LAPD ? ?the most hated cops in all the free world. My own mama?s ashamed of me,? says Carter. Each man meets the other with preconceived notions: Carter speaks loudly in hopes it?ll make Lee better understand English as Lee looks at him with a serene smile, assuming the American is all talk and no follow-through. Each man believes he?s the right person to solve this case, be it through personal ties or street smarts.
The two volley stereotypes at each other throughout the film, which, if it weren?t for the fact that sometimes feelgood movies imprint on you at a young age, might feel wearisome to watch now. But Lee and Carter unwillingly become a charming underdog duo, sidestepping FBI agents on the case (who, through their own self-importance, deem the two a nuisance).
They tumble around Los Angeles ? from a poker game at a bar to an abandoned building that detonates and the Foo Chow restaurant in Chinatown ? towards Soo-yung?s captors, led by Sang, the head underling, who makes a perfect and chilling second-in-charge villain. With a bleach-blond shaved head, lanky body and a scar from Soo-yung whipping her necklace under one of his eyes during her kidnapping, Sang brings the energy of just having finished a cigarette before crushing a body with one?s foot. Despite his generally frosty disposition, at one point he points a gun in front of Lee (whom he?s encountered before in Hong Kong) with barely controlled rage, the adrenaline just under his skin, teeming with desire to be unleashed.
As Lee and Carter start to uncover clues together and back each other up during brawls, the insults they dished with irritation become more of an extension of familiarity and friendship (there are lines my cousin and I cribbed as kids that we admittedly barely understood ? ?I?m Michael Jackson, you?re Tito,? I would scream at him during a game of handball). When the two fight Sang?s henchmen, they lock step into a martial arts combination that resembles an elaborate bro handshake; as they eat eel and ?camel?s hump?, they trade stories about their cop fathers, heroes in their eyes. Here, Rush Hour taps into something that stirred my heart then and now: an ease settles into the two actors, Chan and Tucker?s joviality feeling so genuine that the east-meets-west tropes evolve into characters who have something real at stake, and who are also having fun (so much so that the bloopers for Rush Hour and its sequels have been viewed 19m times).
There are dollops of sexism throughout, and Ratner has faced horrifying assault allegations since, issues warranting thoughtful critique and inspection. But as we reach the final showdown at an art exhibit hosted by the consul, Rush Hour delivers, to me, what a feelgood movie should: a simplification of the world in a way that brings delight, a specificity that makes it feel real, scenes that stick around in your mind for good. When Lee and Carter scope out Foo Chow restaurant, one of Sang?s bases, Carter plays Edwin Starr?s War in the car. It?s strangely comforting when Lee sings ?War, good God / You all? before an aghast Carter teaches him how to enunciate ?y?all?. There?s no deeper meaning, except that perhaps in not taking themselves so seriously, they find space to be something else.
