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Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan take a wild
Parisian taxi ride.

Where did the love go between Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker? Minutes into Rush Hour 3, the duo's first re-teaming in six years, you can already feel the strain -- the labored gasps of heavy lifting; the sense of going through the motions when the thrill is gone. If the first and second Rush Hour sometimes played like greatest hits from the 48 Hrs. and Lethal Weapon buddy action comedy playbook, the jivey, culture-clash chemistry between aerodynamic fish-out-of-water Chan and smack-talking huckster Tucker gave those movies an undeniable kick.

Noémie Lenoir stars as femme fatale
Genevieve.

Combustible comic chemistry might have been enough to float the third film in the trilogy -- in which an Asian diplomat's assassination in L.A. sends cops Tucker and Chan to Paris to wrangle with Chinese Triad henchmen -- but even the few good elements in the movie are weighed down by the feeling that the flick ought to be called Rush Hour 3: Paycheck. It's not like Chan and Tucker phone it in. On foot, chasing the diplomat's assassin, Chan runs, twirls, climbs, leaps and rappels his way all over an L.A. freeway almost as nimbly as he did in his glory days, and Tucker scores audience points when he nearly gets his freak on with a seductive French femme fatale played by Noémie Lenoir and screeches semi-scatological harangues at the students of a martial arts class, a French cab driver and various villains.

By Stephen Rebello

photo credit: Glen Wilson/©2007 New Line Cinema