Rush Hour S01E01: "Pilot"

Television adaptations/continuations nowadays often try to put a wrinkle in the source material so as not to repeat what was seen before. CBS's new Nancy Drew will be old and "diverse" as Sarah Shahi steps into the role. A&E's recent Damien followed the anti-christ decades later when he was a hunky war photojournalist. FX's Fargo inhabits the same universe as the film, but tells all new stories over different time periods. But CBS's Rush Hour? It's the same damned thing as the 1998 movie that starred Jackie Chan as Lee, the stoic and disciplined Hong Kong detective who was partnered with Carter, a brash African-American Los Angeles-based detective played by Chris Tucker.

CBS's version stars John Foo as a stoic and disciplined Hong Kong police officer who is partnered up with a brash African-American Los Angeles cop, played by Justin Hires. There are minor details changed in the plot—Detective Lee's sister is "kidnapped" by a Chinese gang stealing valuable artifacts, whereas in the movie a consulate's daughter was kidnapped by a Chinese gang stealing valuable artifacts—but the overall vibe is the exact same: smash two cops from different cultures together and let them save the day despite the odds.

It's a formula that worked for three movies that grossed nearly $1 billion, so why change it for television? Well, that would make sense if the TV version kept Chan and Tucker, but Foo and Hires—in addition to a boring sense of déjà vu that is everywhere in this predictable and flat procedural—just accentuate how much of a *ahem* rush job this was and how it's a poor imitation of the merely decent original.

If you've seen the original film, you already knew what to expect. An opening in Hong Kong! Helicopter stunts! Carter cracking wise! Carter making fun of Lee's English! Lee kicking people in the face! It's all here in CBS's version, so much so that about 10 minutes into watching the pilot I stopped taking notes because I pretty much knew exactly what was coming next.

What's devastating to Rush Hour is that the chemistry between the two leads, which carried the movies, is almost absent here on CBS. Foo, for whatever reason, is a vacuum of personality who is given little to do but "be foreign," whereas Chan was in the height of his American domination because of his affable charm and relaxed goofiness. (This is not a knock on Foo, but more on his character.) Chan is known for kicking people's asses with rakes, trash cans, and whatever else is in rolling swan dive's reach, but he became a worldwide phenomenon for his ability to be a comedic force. Rush Hour hardly seems like a vehicle for Foo at all because Hires is given all the material. Jokes are made about Foo more than Foo ("He's Asian!") is able to make jokes. And their characters never came to that deep understanding or respect that makes mismatched buddy comedies work, especially one that wants to dance across cultural boundaries. Where's the campfire chat as they got to know each other for real? Despite weak efforts to paint them as more similar than different (one character literally tells them they are more similar than different), they still felt like strangers by the end of the hour, and the pilot apparently didn't think that a strong sense of mutual respect for their differences was important enough to emphasize.

But hey, you came here for the action, right? Well then you probably didn't stay. A nifty helicopter stunt as part of Carter's opening, complete with Carter crashing into the pool of a rich woman's house and then saying, "Crazy weather we're having, it's raining black people!" wasn't bad, even though any sense of danger was sapped by scoring it to Mark Ronson's ubiquitous god-awful jock-jam anthem "Uptown Funk." But most of the action was over produced and Hollywood standard, including a pursuit through a Chinese market that was cut to incomprehensible pieces by the editing room. If you can't bring it like Banshee or Daredevil, then why bother?





Story-wise, ugh. Predictable, predictable, predictable. "You're off the case, Carter!" "Sit this one out, Carter." "Sorry Carter, this isn't your case." Those lines—paraphrased—are mostly mouthed out by Wendy Malick's Captain Lindsey Cole, stuck in the sensible workplace pantsuit of clichéd disgruntled police captain number 4,764 with a stick firmly lodged up her anus. Carter and Lee bounced around a really bland Los Angeles, picking up clues that led them to the next point of interest, their only real obstacles being an occasional fist fight and figuring how to avoid traffic with all the driving they did. (L.A., right?)

And it's standard procedural dreck, like the one clue of a bad guy's hideout being a noodle place with a "hot-ass hostess." And yep, they find the hot-ass hostess, and yes, she is hot ass with a hot ass (that Carter takes the time to make sure Lee appreciates), and then wouldn't you know, the bad guy walked out of the back room. The fact that the hot-ass hostess was there was of zero importance except to give the actress an IMDB credit, because the bad guy showed himself while Carter was still figuring out how he was going to tap that, his idea of diving into Chinese culture besides mocking the cuisine and the elderly Chinese folks who legit have a reason to ignore him.

And yeah, you can probably ignore this, too. Had Rush Hour figured a way to balance out Carter and Lee and not just make Carter the goofy loud mouth and the Lee the man with the emotional attachment to his sister, you know, like the actual movie did, Rush Hour could have been something more than a watered-down adaptation of a movie that was pretty decent to begin with.



