Paper lanterns, a rope, and three 18-wheelers.Even when Jackie tries to get in a good line - "Here I’m Michael Jackson, you’re Toto!" - Tucker usually has the last word: "Tito! You mean Tito! Toto is what we had for dinner last night!" A Martin Luther King, Jr. Tucker hurls so much material that eventually something has to stick, and does. And an impossible-looking slide under the bars at a casino service counter. And the effortless way he dismounts from a tall cart being pushed through a casino hallway (and the sight gag that follows). I liked how he immobilizes a man with a life preserver. "You died!" - "Inspector Yu died?" A silly case of mistaken death leads to an exchange that briefly lives up to a classic Abbott & Costello tradition.Jackie gets in some nice chair fu, Tucker gets in a funny use of the old "All y’all look alike" saw, and there’s even an opportunity for some rare teamwork Jackie-style. Lee in a pink bathrobe and Carter in a towel take on a dozen Triad (Chinese gangster) goons. For most of the movie she doesn’t break a sweat (though she does repeatedly kick Carter into oblivion, which I can’t say I minded) then, in the last reel, she gets some great action scenes. Ziyi ("Z" to her Asian fans) glowers and struts about in black leather and spike heels, yet somehow becomes most unnerving while simply cooing in her little-girl voice, conveying the desired effect by mere inflection (her lines are all Chinese with subtitles). The slip of a girl who made such an impact on American audiences as the delicate dragon Jen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon brings a welcome presence to the role of the Bond-style bad girl. For anyone who’s seen Jackie in action, the implications of such ready-made monkeybars are obvious. Yes, they really use bamboo for urban scaffolding in Asia. ![]() ![]() No, they don’t guest-star in Rush Hour 2 - but they both come up in the first five minutes, and they both get a laugh. ![]() Instead, I’ll content myself with merely listing some of what works and what doesn’t in this sequel. So which is better, One or Two? Any answer would be too individual to matter much. (New York is next up, according to the movie’s last scene). This time Carter gets to be the Fish Out of Water for awhile, as the boys take their act to Lee’s native Hong Kong for about half the movie before Carter’s criminological theorizing ("Follow the rich white man") leads them back to L.A. Once again there’s an East-meets-West odd-couple juxtaposition of straight man Lee with outrageous motormouth Carter.
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