Rush Hour

Jonathan Lee (Jon Foo) is a no-nonsense kung fu fighting cop from Hong Kong. His sister Kim is eager to prove herself to him. She gets an assignment and assumed killed by a Chinese gang while guarding a transport to LA. Jonathan is partnered with fast-talking irreverent LAPD detective James Carter (Justin Hires) on the case. Kim reveals that she was actually part of the gang. Jonathan and James continue the team. Didi Diaz (Aimee Garcia) is a fellow detective. Gerald Page (Page Kennedy) is James' low-life criminal informant and cousin. Their boss Captain Lindsay Cole (Wendie Malick) discovers that Kim is actually working undercover to bring down the gang.

This show has 13 episodes and canceled after 7 although the writing was on the wall before the pilot aired. Copying from a movie has not been a terribly successful strategy. Justin Hires is a functional fast-talking black guy. He's essentially a lesser but workable copy. Jon Foo is a few step down. He is stiff and Jackie Chan is not stiff. That keeps the chemistry lackluster. Over time, they are able to build up to a functional TV police procedural with some minor chemistry. However, it runs out of time before it could find its feet.

They say that right now we are living in a golden age of television, with high quality shows like "Game of Thrones" freely available. However, you wouldn't know that just from THIS particular television series. Now, I was never a big fan of the three "Rush Hour" movies despite them having Jackie Chan as one of the stars. But any of them is much better than this show. From what I saw of the show, it has a weird 1980s-1990s vibe, from the production values to the simple- minded writing. And while I normally applaud when an American TV show casts an Asian in a prominent role (which doesn't happen very often), actor Jon Foo has none of the charisma Jackie Chan had. Also, his martial arts scenes are TERRIBLY choreographed, edited, and directed, which make me suspect Foo does not know martial arts at all. As for his co-star, I will admit that Justin Hires is not as annoying as Chris Tucker... but he is annoying all the same, and comes across more often as not as a stereotype. (As a matter of fact, Foo's humorless acting does the same for him as well.) I find it really hard to believe a show with such poor quality in its pilot alone got picked up by a network... though I won't be all that surprised if I soon hear that the show got cancelled.

There's a lot of hate on IMDb for this series, but you know, it's not all that bad. It's a standard buddy cop series, a little dim-witted humor, a bit of banter, "special" moments, shooting and fighting. It's nothing you haven't seen a million times before, but at the same time, it's nothing haven't seen done much worse before.

I think the problem people have is they're comparing it with the movies. Obviously this movie's attempt at Jackie Chan-style fight scenes is going to be pretty disappointing, but they do try, and I've seen worse fights on TV. And quite honestly, I never totally connected to Chris Tucker and kind of like the TV guy better. And while the series is quite inferior to the first movie, and somewhat inferior to the third, it's really no worse than the second.

This is not to say that I play to keep watching. I saw 3 episodes, and they were all okay, and if there wasn't much else to watch on TV I would watch more, but truthfully, even among mindless TV series, you can do better than Rush Hour.

But it's fine.

The first episode wasn't the best start to this show. I gave it a second chance.

Been looking for a good buddy cop TV series. ... so I am grasping at anything.

It has become a procedural show after the first episode.

Acting isn't the best of things ... script is average. Comedy aspect is typical... Hope it gets better, the more I watch the more it grows on me.

Hope the actors come into their own instead of trying to become the next Chris Tucker / Jackie Chan.

I shall keep watching it.

I didn't really like the first episode because it seemed like a bad remake of Rush hour 1.

Most TV series take about 2-3 episodes to get into and I have disliked a pilot before but got hooked on a show after giving it another chance few times before.

Rush hour is funny, a bit exciting and has good production value. I'm 3 episodes in and liking it more and more.

1 2 3

Give this show a chance and don't judge it based on the movies. This is it's own thing and should be judged as so.