6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
On vacation in Hong Kong, Chief Inspector Lee and LAPD Det. Carter are asked to investigate Triad crime lord Ricky Tan, former police partner of Lee’s father and chief suspect in the bombing of the American Embassy.
Starring: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, John Lone, Zhang Ziyi, Roselyn SanchezComedy | 100% |
Action | 97% |
Martial arts | 52% |
Crime | 31% |
Thriller | 1% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps)
Czech: Dolby Digital 2.0
Hungarian: Dolby Digital 2.0
Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0
Thai: Dolby Digital 5.1
Turkish: Dolby Digital Mono
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
Japanese is hidden
English SDH, German SDH, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Polish, Romanian, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The delayed arrival of Rush Hour 2 on Blu-ray is a textbook example of the screwball release patterns that
routinely leave the format's fans scratching their heads. The film is the middle chapter in a buddy-cop
trilogy of which the first and third installments have been available on Blu-ray for a long time.
Rush Hour 3 was issued in 2007,
during the format's
infancy, followed by the original Rush
Hour three years later. For five more years, however, the second installment remained MIA while
fans grew increasingly impatient. Eventually, Warner Brothers' foreign affiliates decided to take
matters into their own hands, and RH2 appeared on Blu-ray in October 2015 in several overseas
territories (a list of releases can be found here).
Still, the disc continued to
be withheld from the U.S. market, apparently so that new extras could be created. Since Warner's discs are region-free,
many U.S. fans simply ordered RH2 from abroad to complete their set.
Now, over a year later, RH2 has finally appeared in America, and the wait wasn't worth it. The
sole new extra is a 20-minute retrospective documentary, which doesn't even occupy the same
disc as RH2. Someone must have run the numbers and concluded that it was cheaper to put the
documentary on its own disc and bundle it with the existing version of RH2, rather than re-author
the title from scratch. So the Blu-ray of RH2 now being offered to the American market turns out
to be identical to the disc that has already been available abroad for more than a year. It even has
2015 file dates. If you imported it from Germany or Japan, there's no reason to replace it.
To add insult to injury, RH2 isn't even being sold separately here, although it may be at a later
date. For the moment, the only way to acquire it domestically is to buy the Rush Hour Trilogy, thereby also purchasing (or repurchasing) the first two films. Even
worse, Warner hasn't favored RH1 and RH3 with remasters using AVC and higher bitrates. The discs in the
Trilogy are repressings of the same bit-starved, VC-1/encoded releases from six and nine years ago, respectively.
Rush Hour 2 was shot on film by Matthew F. Leonetti (Star Trek: First Contact). The transfer for this Blu-ray edition was created in 2014 under the auspices of Warner's New Line Cinema group by scanning an interpositive at 2K. The resulting 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is sharply detailed with a pleasingly film-like texture that provides a warmth to the image even when it is dominated (as it often is) by rich blues and deep grays. Nighttime blacks are deep and solid, and both the Hong Kong and Vegas scenes feature bright saturated hues with a heavy emphasis on red (the casino owned by Alan King's hotel magnate is called The Red Dragon and is decorated accordingly). Some light sharpening has been applied, but it is generally unobtrusive.The film's grain texture is finely resolved, revealing fine detail in Jackie Chan's expressive face and Chris Tucker's frequently ludicrous wardrobe. Because RH2 was prepared several years ago, before Warner's catalog division reformed its mastering practices, the average bitrate is an anemic 23.95 Mbps (with over 20 GBs of space left blank on the BD-50).
Warner released the first and third Rush Hour films with 7.1 soundtracks, but RH2 receives only a 5.1 track, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. The mix isn't likely to rank highly on anyone's list of audio "demo" discs, but it provides appropriate dynamic range and surround immersion for a modern action film, albeit one that aims more for comedy than thrills. The frequent explosions, gunfire, breaking glass and flying debris have sufficient impact to make their point, but equally enjoyable are the many smaller sound effects accompanying the fight sequences. (An extended skirmish on a bamboo scaffolding surrounding a Hong Kong building is my favorite.) The dialogue is as clear as Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker ever are; exchanges in Chinese are subtitled. Composer Lalo Shifrin resumes scoring duties from the first film, and several pop tunes make memorable appearances, especially Michael Jackon's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough".
Although I do not have the 2003 "InfiniFilm" DVD of RH2 for direct comparison, the Blu-ray
appears to contain most of its special features, with the omission of a trivia track and the DVD-ROM elements (including the
shooting script).
Rush Hour 2 is a competent, if unremarkable, Blu-ray presentation. If it had been released here
last year in a single-disc package, as it should have been, I would recommend it—but that didn't
happen. Purchasers seeking to complete the trilogy should wait either for a sale or until Warner
releases RH2 separately.
2007
1998
2013
1994
2012
2014
1988
2016
2003
2014
35th Anniversary Edition
1987
Mastered in 4K
2003
2002
2011
2002
2004
1985
2004
2001
2003