Rush Hour

Brett Ratner’s 1998 film drops Hong Kong inspector Lee into Los Angeles beside detective Carter, tying them to a kidnapping neither wants to share. Jackie Chan finished the shoot unhappy. In a 2002 interview with Holly McClure he recalled telling his manager he should never have made it, his head still a Chinese head that did not get American culture or dialogue. Only later did he invert his rule: what he found unfunny was exactly what Americans laughed at. Ratner told the Los Angeles Times in 2001 that Chan cued his lines off the last word of Chris Tucker’s sentence, and that Tucker improvised so freely the word almost never came: the mismatch on screen is partly an actor genuinely lost, not acting. Tucker said Chan would arrive a day early, pick up a trash can and a broom, and build the fight from them. Box Office Mojo lists a thirty three million dollar budget, an opening weekend of the same size, and 244.7 million worldwide; a third film in 2007 took 258.1 million. A good fit if you want fights built from whatever was lying around the set that morning rather than clean exchanges of punches. Not for anyone expecting two leads playing one comedy: one improvises, the other cannot follow, and the film runs on the gap.