How others will see it. This is a carefully packaged buddy cop movie with diverse demographic appeal. Since the film was a boffo box office smash, the formula was (once again) successful. Which is why there was a Rush Hour 2. Audiences get what they deserve.
How I felt about it. I don't watch many action movies, because few are any good. There are exceptions, of course, like 48 Hrs., the early Eddie Murphy vehicle where the violence actually seemed properly proportioned within the story. Why that film works, while the carbon copy (Rush Hour) does not, has more to do with the two stars and the director than the script. 48 Hrs. is tense. Rush Hour is trash talk and silly action. There's a difference.
Rush Hour has the smell of formula and packaging. All your action movie cliches are here. The car that blows up. The agent who can duck and outrun bullets. The Asian dude who can beat up four guys at the same time, even while handicapped. The preposterous insubordination by the "lone wolf" cop. The hero captured alive by the bad guys, who don't or won't kill him. The arrogant heads of the FBI and LAPD, who always make the wrong decisions, much to the frustration of the renegade cop, who inevitably is proven both heroic and (more importantly) correct.
We've seen most of this before. The only improvement upon the basic formula is that the trash-talking black cop is actually funny at times, such as his exchange with a Chinese take-out cashier. But perhaps there's too much comic relief. That's what turns a would-be thriller into an exercise in action movie formulas. Most of all, there's way too much gun waving.
We suspect this is a film not to be taken seriously when Chan escapes from his handler, Tucker, by boarding an open air tour bus. He stands up, turns around, and waves at Tucker. Is he trying to escape, or is he playing a game of one-up?
We're certain this is not a film to be taken seriously when Tucker takes it upon himself to teach Chan how to sing (and dance to) Motown classics. War. What is it good for? For one thing, it fills up theaters if there's enough things blowing up and enough gun-waving and trash talking. This is not The French Connection. Rush Hour is more like Hong Kong Phooey, an unreleased Hollywood project also linked to workmanlike producer/director Brett Ratner.