Almost three years after their last adventure in Rush Hour 2 (2001), Carter is now working as a Los Angeles traffic officer, while his friend and ace Hong Kong Police inspector, Lee, escorts the Chinese Ambassador, Han, to the World Criminal Court, to disclose crucial information about the Triads. However, after a botched assassination attempt, the mismatched duo find themselves in Paris, struggling to retrieve a list of Triad leaders' names, as the murderous crime syndicate's henchmen try their best to stop them. We reunite with Lee and Carter for their third outing in this trilogy. This last entry is usually considered the weakest link in the series and whilst I can agree in some areas, overall, I still had an awesome time. It may be ranked lowest in my listing of the movies, but it is by no means bad. On the contrary, this film features plenty of phenomenal moments that may even be considered some of the finest in the whole series. One of the main issues I felt was the time gap between this and the last totalling 6 years. It is a bit noticeable during the opening segment however as the adventure continued, it did start to feel like the other films and part of the same product. The movie opens with Carter, now demoted to a traffic officer, doing his usual routines of singing and cutting slick dance moves whilst he directs the cars. He is of course distracted, causing all kinds of accidents meanwhile, Lee is protecting Ambassador Han, whose daughter was kidnapped in Rush Hour (1998), but everything goes awry after getting shot leading to a high-speed chase. Crossing paths once again, the duo work together to put a stop to any further attempts on the Ambassador's life at the request of his daughter, Soo Yung, now all grown up. The duo are a little shakey at first, not being on the best of terms after Carter nonfatally shot Isabela from the last film who Lee was interested in. However as the story plays out, the two of them start to become closer again. Some truly hilarious and incredible scenes take place from here on out like the martial arts studio where the pair get relentlessly beaten by a giant, followed swiftly by the most iconic part of the film with Carter's "Who are you?" back and forth with Yu. Then there is the shootout at the hospital, which features so many unbelievable stunts and fantastic banter, like bickering over the empty gun Lee threw Carter whilst in the line of fire. Also, the interrogation scene of the french French-speaking Chinese man with a nun as the translator was outstandingly funny with her having to repeat some of the bad language of the guy only for Carter to tell her equally bad responses. Upon travelling to France, they get in a taxi where Carter gets irritated with the driver, George, who is bashing Americans and proceeds to hold him at gunpoint making him sing the national anthem, which is very amusing. It doesn't stop there as they both make an impression on the driver after getting him in chases and gunfights making him feel like an American spy. The chase was insanely good with motorbikes flying everywhere and George getting invested in the action. He is unironically the greatest aspect of the film with so many scenes and he even plays an integral role in the finale in a shocking moment that had me in hysterics. Carter continues to attempt wooing women this time with Geneviève is targeted by the Triads and both Lee and Carter rescue her during a performance by doing their own singing routine. The main villain in this flick is Kenji who has a personal connection to Lee, which led to some tense moments during the remarkable sword fight on the Eiffel Tower that continued to display Jackie Chan's exceptional stunts as Lee climbs and fights on the beams of the tower. The pair have individual troublesome tasks to overcome in this climax, but they each come through in the end. They make their leave by dancing to 'War' one last time, which is practically their theme song. Overall, I still had a joyful time with this lesser-regarded entry. Yes, it may have problems, but overlooking them, this is just as much fun, if not more at times, as the first two. With talks of a fourth entry yet to come to fruition, this is still a great place to end the series.
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