Last weekend, an unusual piece of news surfaced in a Semafor article about President Donald Trump’s influence on American pop culture. David Ellison, the son of one of Trump’s prominent supporters, recently became the chair and chief executive of the newly merged film company Paramount Skydance, which is backed by his tech billionaire father, Larry. According to an unnamed source cited by Semafor, the president has “personally pressed” the elder Ellison to revive the old buddy-cop franchise “Rush Hour.”
This was just one sentence in a single article, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. However, a few days later, more news broke: Paramount had reportedly secured funding to actually bring back the cinematic experience known as “Rush Hour.” I’m all for it. I’ll watch “Rush Hour,” “Rush Hour 2,” and even “Rush Hour 3.” Did you know there was a short-lived TV reboot in 2016? Guess who spent hours searching for lost clips on YouTube?
I screamed to the universe on Thanksgiving, until finally my quest was complete and my algorithm started suggesting “Rumble in the Bronx.” “Rush Hour” stars Hong Kong martial artist Jackie Chan and American comedian Chris Tucker. The movies were released in 1998, 2001, and 2007. In the first film, a foreign diplomat’s daughter is kidnapped in Los Angeles, but he doesn’t trust American law enforcement to handle the case, so he tells them to bring in Chan. The Americans are reluctant, but the diplomat insists, leading to a shadow operation where Tucker is assigned to babysit Chan.
The plot of “Rush Hour” mirrors the plot of the White House in many ways. Things get a bit more chaotic after that. In the second installment, two U.S. customs officers are killed in Hong Kong, so Chan and Tucker are forced to get massages from beautiful ladies and then run naked down a busy street. In “Rush Hour 3,” Chan and Tucker travel to Paris, where they are subjected to invasive anal cavity searches by a French official played by Roman Polanski — a choice that is certainly notable given Polanski’s history.
I texted my younger brother about my “Rush Hour” odyssey because we share a genuine love for 1990s action movies. Show either of us any still image of Nicolas Cage, and we will immediately know whether the appropriate response is, “Welcome to the Rock,” “Put the bunny back in the box,” or “No more drugs for that man.”
“I tried to rewatch ‘Rush Hour 3’ too,” Andrew texts me in solidarity. “At 9:18 in, Tucker says to Chan, ‘I’d like for you to meet our dates for this evening. Fat one’s yours.’ I think that’s enough for me.”
“But if you stop now,” I text back, “You will miss all the homophobic jokes in the second half.”
We both decide that “Rush Hour 3” should be taken out back and buried. But back to the first two films in the American Ring Cycle known as “Rush Hour.”
What can we glean about the fact that, of all the movie franchises out there, this is the one Trump is supposedly lobbying to reboot? When he could have picked “Home Alone” and cast himself once again? When he could have launched a whole new franchise starring a president whose superpowers are golf and REVENGE OF CAPS LOCK?
Some answers are obvious: the president likes fast food, and “Rush Hour” is the McRib. There is no subtext, only Jackie Chan backflipping off of moving buses. The performers are not superlative, but they are funny enough, talented enough, brash enough, and macho enough. “Everyone is so afraid of their own g—— shadow,” a supervisor tells Tucker in the beginning of the first movie. “It’s nice to meet a detective willing to lay it on the line. Ever so often we have to let the general public know that we can still blow s— up.”
It’s a good time. On the 1990s action spectrum that goes from Steven Seagal to Will Smith, I give it two Nicolas Cages.
Not for nothing, but “Rush Hour” is also cobbled together from the gently racist stereotypes that your gently racist uncle likes to cite as evidence that he is not racist. Yes, Tucker’s character thinks Asian food is gross — “You got some better food? Chicken wings? Baby back ribs?” he demands of a restaurateur — but eventually he decides that it’s “kinda good.” Or, yes, Chan accidentally uses the worst American slur, but, haha, it’s played for laughs.
“Rush Hour” is the kind of movie that proffers that the best way to end racism in America is to just stop making such a big deal about racism. We don’t need affirmative action or self-reflection. We just need one guy with a gun and one guy with a roundhouse kick, bonding over their shared enjoyment of spying on a disrobing woman through binoculars.
Also, did I mention they both have tremendous daddy issues?
Still, as I kept watching “Rush Hour,” I couldn’t help but feel like I was trying to retrofit a thesis, cherry-picking random scenes to explain how this movie explained Trump. The real reason he’s supposedly been lobbying for its reboot likely has nothing at all to do with his affection for the movies, but rather his affection for their director, Brett Ratner.
In 2017, six women accused Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct, which caused Warner Bros. not to renew their contract with him, jettisoning the world’s long dream of “Rush Hour 4.” Instead, Ratner pimple-patched himself onto Trumpworld and is helming an upcoming Melania Trump documentary for Amazon (whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post). So by encouraging Paramount to resurrect the franchise, Trump gets to help a friend, and also dunk on cancel culture. Win-win.
(Ratner, reached by my colleague Ethan Beck, declined to comment.)
And as I worked my way through the series, I began to be haunted by a suspicion I could not shake: Has Trump even seen the “Rush Hour” movies?
If he had watched them recently, he might have noticed that the villains, more often than not, are powerful older White men. Specifically, powerful older White men who have bamboozled the world into thinking they are working for good while instead working on their own financial gain, only to be stymied by the multicultural team of heroes.
Max Von Sydow as the corrupt chairman of the world criminal court. Tom Wilkinson as the corrupt police commander who secretly runs a crime ring.
“Every crime has a rich White man behind it, waiting for his cut,” Tucker confidently explains to Chan at one point, before they catch the rich White man in the act.
You know what, go ahead. Bring on the “Rush Hours” for the American public to enjoy. It’s not a bad plan.
