Chan's the man Love and death in the clans

RUSH HOUR 2 Cert 12, 105 mins adequate

ON the whole, I prefer Jackie Chan solo. But film franchises and Rush Hour 1's box office dictate that this quiet-voiced, lithe- limbed acrobat and comedian, reprising his Hong Kong tec, has again to buddy up to the motor-mouthed LA cop played by falsetto-toned Chris Tucker as a preening exhibitionist who hits on any passing woman in a manner tantamount to sexual harassment.

Together they get mixed up with bombs, casinos and Zhang Ziyi, the tiny swordswoman out of Crouching Tiger. First they cause havoc along the Hong Kong waterfront where they're investigating a forged-notes scam. Tucker, drawing on African-American experience, scents the trail right away: "Follow the rich white man." If only it were all as sharp.

It's intermittently entertaining, lavishly mounted, especially when the action swings over to Las Vegas. Each location, East or West, promotes an action set-piece highly characteristic of its geography: kung-Another tight spot: Jackie Chan in trouble again in Rush Hour 2 fu on the vertical when Chan pursues the gang up bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong; then a massage-parlour ruckus that strands the couple naked in the marketplace; finally a tour de force battle- piece in Las Vegas where a brand new casino barely lasts one opening night before cops and crooks level it to the green baize. But one misses the idiosyncratic charm of Chan s earlier knockabout routines.

I laughed loudest during the outtakes of onset cock-ups, physical and verbal, now habitually unscrolling with the end credits, as Chan twice attempts to slide under a cashier s grille in the casino and twice clips his chin before being led groggily but gamely away, promising: Jackie Chan always gets it right. He does in the film.

Ratings: adequate good very good outstanding X poor

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