Mercy Killing
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Artist:
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Album:Bonnie & Clyde
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Track:Bonnie And Clyde - (with Brigitte Bardot)
Back in L.A. on biz, I had a chance to pow-wow with the esteemed Crash Pryor on a variety of issues before high-tailing it back to the studio. Great guy. Savvy guy. No bullshit guy. We chewed the fat and passed on the skinny until I had to get back to the set. All good. Then, things took a turn for the worse.I had to hit an advance screening of the third film in the “Rush Hour” action-comedy series that teams the charming, peripatetic Hong Kong martial-arts star Jackie Chan and the screechy-voiced motor-mouthed American “actor” Chris Tucker. And man, was I sorry.The plot, such as it is, concerns the cops played by Chan and Tucker unearthing the identities of Chinese mob kingpins. Action? There’s some typically-acrobatic fighting and leaping from Chan, but very little that matches his best work, other than a fairly exciting set of encounters on the Eiffel Tower. (The film is largely set in Paris.) Comedy? You must be kidding. It’s nothing short of criminal for a man of Chan’s Keatonesque skills at physical humor (that would be Buster Keaton, not Diane) to be marginalized by the incessant brain-dead palaver of the talent-free, obnoxious, rampantly unfunny Tucker.The script – filled with unexplained incongruities, gratuitous character twists, and infantile, cringe-inducing attempts at humor - is terrible. The acting (even by the venerated Max Von Sydow as a snooty diplomat) is substandard. The direction by “Rush Hour” honcho Brett Ratner is flat-out clumsy, despite the crackerjack sequences overseen by Chan’s superb fight choreographers. And Tucker is a nightmare. From his first ear-torturing lines of dialogue to his final jive-dancing stroll into the night with Chan, he single-handedly kills the franchise. I hope.On the other hand, a theatrical dance number featuring a beautiful, statuesque cabaret star under suspicion uses the trés cool 1967 novelty hit “Bonnie & Clyde” – a duet by no less than French singer-songwriter supreme Serge Gainsbourg and sex-kitten-for-the-ages Brigitte Bardot – as its score.The hell with “Rush Hour 3.” Get a load of Serge and Brigitte doing “Bonnie & Clyde” in the vintage clip below. It’s a real killer.
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