Kicking & Screeching: Comedic crime-fighters Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker return for ‘Rush Hour 3’

The last time we saw Los Angeles Police Detective James Carter and Chinese Chief Inspector Lee, in “Rush Hour 2,” they had dusted off another bunch of bad guys and were headed to New York City for a Knicks game.

Six years later, in the storyline and in real time, the comedic crime-fighters are back for “Rush Hour 3,” in theaters today.

The movie opens with Chris Tucker’s Carter directing traffic in L.A., and Jackie Chan’s Lee in town with Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma from “Rush Hour”) for a meeting of the World Criminal Court.

An assassination attempt on the ambassador will soon have Carter and Lee in Paris, where they do battle with a deadly Chinese crime ring. Tucker sings a lot and finally has a love scene, and martial-arts master Chan, at age 53, is still kicking villains into oblivion.

Nine years after the first “Rush Hour” hit theaters, fans already wonder if they can look forward to “RH 4.”

“Who knows?” says director Brett Ratner. “We could keep going: ‘Rush Hour 10,’ ‘Grumpy Old “Rush Hour.” ‘

“If the movie is a huge success and people are going in droves to the theater, the studio says, ‘We’re making another one.’ They’re writing the check.”

“We gotta do it fast if we’re gonna do it, because Jackie is gettin’ up there,” jokes Tucker, who turns 35 later this month.

The successful stand-up comedian became a multimillionaire off the “Rush Hour” franchise, with the first two films grossing $576 million worldwide.

The history of the fertile franchise partnership between Ratner and Tucker began in the early 1990s, when Tucker was a regular on HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” along with Mike Epps, Martin Lawrence, Cedric the Entertainer and Chris Rock.

Rapper Heavy D hired him in 1994 to appear in the video “Nuttin’ but Love,” which was being directed by Ratner.

“I was thinkin’ it was gonna be some black director, and here was this white, Jewish guy,” Tucker recalls. “He looked like a playboy, sort of, and I’m like, ‘What’s wrong with this dude?’ “

Tucker made $1,500 for the video shoot but was still short his rent money, so he asked Ratner for an additional $500. Ratner promised to take it out of his own salary and send Tucker a check.

“He did a great job on the video, first of all, and then he sent me extra money,” says Tucker.

“So, then it came to (the 1997 film) ‘Money Talks.’ I was executive producer on this movie, and the director we had on it, I sorta pushed him out the door because he didn’t understand improvisation.

“Brett was one of the guys who came in to do the movie, and I said, `I know you, man, from the video.’ And I knew he was best friends with (rap impresario and ‘Def Comedy Jam’ executive producer) Russell Simmons. He knew black people. I knew he knew where I came from.”

As for Tucker, Ratner says, “We work great together. We come from a generation that grew up watching ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ and …”

” ‘48 Hours,”’ Tucker offers.

“And Richard Pryor and all these guys,” Ratner continues. “We have the same interests and love kung fu movies. I said to Chris, ‘Do you like Jackie Chan?’ and he said, ‘Of course I love Jackie Chan, are you kidding me?’

“It’s like DeNiro and Scorsese are from the same background, and so when they do a gangster movie, it’s so real. When we do a buddy-cop movie, we grew up watching those movies, and we have good instincts. We know what works and what doesn’t.”

As soon as Ratner learned how much Tucker liked Chan’s movies, he was on a plane to South Africa to meet the Chinese martial-arts star.

Ratner had just wrapped “Money Talks” and had acquired the “Rush Hour” script. He was certain that the pairing of Chan and Tucker, cops from completely different cultures, would be one for the ages (and the sequels).

“I said, ‘Jackie, I watched all your (Asian) movies. I know that you can’t have a 20-minute fight sequence because American audiences will get bored, so we’ll take the best of those 20 minutes and put it into two minutes,’ ” Ratner says.

“And I told him, ‘I worked with this comedian named Chris Tucker, he’s a comedic genius. His verbal comedy, your physical comedy, it’s going to be brilliant.”

Later, back in L.A., Tucker recalls, “We had a big meeting, and they told Jackie about me, and Jackie didn’t say anything the whole meeting, so I was kind of concerned.

“I said, ‘Brett, does he speak English, because he hasn’t said nuthin’ the whole meeting and I keep talking to him, and he’s not saying anything.’

“So Brett said, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll learn English by the time we start filming.’ I said, ‘Brett, I can’t be funny with somebody who doesn’t speak English.’ “

Ratner laughs. “I told (Tucker), ‘I’m playing with you. He speaks English. That’s just his culture.’ “

Tucker took that experience into filming for the first movie. “That’s where I got the saying, ‘Do you understand the words that are comin’ out of my mouth?’ ” he explains.

“That was real,” Ratner says.

“That’s how I work,” says Tucker. “I take my real emotions and put them on film, instead of me just reading lines off of paper.

“That’s why I think `Rush Hour’ was so successful, because it was coming from a real place.”

Chuckles Ratner, “When Chris walked out of the room after that first meeting, Jackie said, ‘I like that Chris Tucker, but I don’t understand a word he’s saying.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, Jackie.’ That’s when I knew they were going to be brilliant.”

Adds Tucker, with a shrug: “We still don’t understand each other.”