What a "Rush"

After the surprising success of 1998's Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker buddy comedy "Rush Hour" (I mean, really, who expected this to become a profitable franchise?) and its high-grossing 2001 sequel "Rush Hour 2", the "Hour" team returns for a third go. And, as this summer is proving, just because it's a third sequel doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. The filmmakers - returning director Brett Ratner and "2" scribe Jeff Nathanson - adhere religiously to the formula that made the first two films hard to dislike: Mr. Tucker's motor-mouth and Mr. Chan's dizzying physicality. Having sent up the fish-out-of-water scenario in America (the original) and China ("2"), "Rush Hour 3" takes both characters out of their respective elements and drops them in Paris to hunt down the mysterious Shy Shen.

Exactly who or what Shy Shen is and why he or she is worth hunting down gets less and less interesting the more it is revealed. But the film's plot (in "3" more than ever) is at best an afterthought. In fact, the plot is almost insultingly poor. There are virtually no motivations for the wasted international cast, including French model Noémie Lenoir in the femme fatale role, French (by way of Israel) actor Yvan Attal as a hysterically nationalistic cabbie, Japanese star Hiroyuki Sanada ("Sunshine", "Ringu") as someone for Mr. Chan to fight with, and even Max von Sydow and Roman Polanski as famous actors cashing large paychecks. All these characters exist in scenes strung loosely together to get the Chan-Tucker team from A-to-B with as many opportunities for comedy and action as possible.

What saves "Rush Hour 3" is its own disinterest in its plot. The first half of Mr. Nathanson's zippy script is wall-to-wall with one-liners from Mr. Tucker, whiz-bang action set pieces featuring the aging but still graceful Mr. Chan, and even (dare I say it?) some clever moments - including a send-up of Abbott and Costello's famed "Who's On First?" routine and a memorable multi-lingual interrogation scene that ingeniously gets around the MPAA ratings board. During its finest moments, the filmmakers channel that perfect blend of comedy and mystery that Blake Edwards did so masterfully in the early "Pink Panther" films.

Obviously, "Rush Hour 3" isn't high comedy and, after three films, we're not expecting that from this series, but the "Rush" franchise trademarks - tongue-in-cheek action comedy - are all here in fine form. As always, Mr. Tucker is hit-and-miss, but he has a looser screen presence this time around and his success ratio is much higher than usual (he hysterically tells a French-speaking Asian criminal, "You're Asian! Stop humiliating yourself!"), and Mr. Chan (at 53!) may be getting a little long-in-the-tooth to be hopping around the Eiffel Tower but, as the outtakes show, he suffers for his art. The "Rush" series is like an energetic puppy, it's hard not to smile as it trips over itself to earn your love. This may not be their finest "Hour", but it's a good way to spend 90 minutes.