TIRED 'RUSH HOUR 3' DOESN'T SLOW DOWN THE INSULTS.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM CRITIC

Movie threequel summer limps to a close with "Rush Hour 3." This entry does everything that made the first two mildly diverting buddy cop comedies inexplicably popular, of course, but it seems to be getting tired of the tomfoolery.

So are we.

Jackie Chan's action sequences are fewer, not overly creative and shot from farther away (which makes the use of stunt stand-ins more, not less, obvious). Chris Tucker makes an increased amount of annoying noises linked to lamer lines. The ethnic insult quota is upped and spread wider, which someone in charge evidently mistook for a good thing. Pacing, story construction, humor -- none of it is as sharp as the franchise standard, which isn't exactly cutting edge to begin with.

To add insult to the general sense of off-timing, "Rush Hour 3" has the bad luck to come out right after the only 2007 threequel, "The Bourne Ultimatum," that was actually better than its predecessors.

How do you say "ouch" in Cantonese?

Or, more to the point, in French. One of the few good ideas that the "Rush Hour" machine operators, director Brett Ratner and writer Jeff Nathanson, came up with was to send detectives Lee and Carter to Paris, so not just one but both of them could beat the fish-out-of-water concept to comic death.

Tired as this basically is, the ploy actually pays a few dividends.

The L.A. and Hong Kong cop have a smelly encounter with the city's famous sewers, and, of course, the climax involves fighting triad villains on the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps best of all, though, is the one running bigot gag that's actually funny: George, an American-hating Paris taxi driver played by "Munich's" Yvan Attal, learns to love Yankee-style mass destruction as he becomes more enmeshed in Carter and Lee's antics.

Attal is also a fine director in his own right. As is, even more so, Roman Polanski, but he somehow drew the cruddier role of a French police honcho who welcomes our heroes to town with full cavity searches. What, I wonder, is the point of that old joke in this context? That the French can be gratuitously nasty? That Polanski's some kind of perv (though no one ever said he was this kind)? That this is the year when every buddy movie's got to have some gay panic business?

Who knows? Maybe the people who think all "Rush Hour" films are hilarious will get the joke.

Max von Sydow is also in the cast, which may confirm the great fear of his old boss, the late Ingmar Bergman, that there is no God.

Beyond that, cars are crashed, guns are shot, and women are ogled.

There's no sense complaining that a vulgar comedy is vulgar. But not being as funny as we know this stuff can be is a different matter.

We're discussing a threequel, though, so what more can you realistically expect than to rush right out and be disappointed?

Bob Strauss [phone]

[e-mail]

RUSH HOUR 3 - Two and one half stars

>PG-13: violence, sex, nudity, language, racism.

>Starring: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Hiroyuki Sanada, Naomie Lenoir, Youki Kudoh, Yvan Attal, Max von Sydow, Roman Polanski.

>Director: Brett Ratner.

>Running time: 1 hr. 31 min.

>Playing: Area wide.

>In a nutshell: This Paris-set retread is uninspired, with a handful of worthwhile gags and Chan stunts on the Eiffel Tower.

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Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are back with more -- although not necessarily more amusing -- antics in "Rush Hour 3."