Stereotypes In Rush Hour And Brett Rathner

Rush Hour is a 1998 buddy film comedy where the plot develops around the growing friendship of two special agents played by Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. Rush Hour teams these two men, who do not want to be on a team. The story revolves around the need to find the Chinese consul’s daughter, who was kidnapped by a man from China who is after money. Tucker plays Detective Carter who is on bad terms with his captain in the LAPD. The FBI asks his captain for a “babysitter” for a Chinese agent who the consul was bringing to assist with case. As punishment for Detective Carters unruly behavior in the past, the captain assigns him to the case. The Chinese agent is played by Jackie Chan. He is known in the film as Inspector Lee. Inspector Lee has a strong bond with the daughter, Soo Yung and is determined to find her no matter how many obstacles the FBI or Detective Carter set in his way. The convention that exists in this genre of movies is that the characters commonly begin the movie by disliking each other and in Rush Hour, this is the case. Other buddy films include Lethal Weapon (1987) and
The characters were represented by the typical stereotypes given to their ethnicities. Inspector Lee, who was played by Jackie Chan, was played as a polite and respectable Asian man, while Detective James Carter played by Chris Tucker was exhibited as a loud, thoughtless, and disrespectful African American man. These personality traits were part of each of the agent’s personal identity. Their identity which is the “distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity" (http://wordnet.princeton.edu) is what makes this movie comedic. Their personalities are so different, but after time their personal identities molded into a strong partnership. People do often say that opposites attract, and this movie exhibits that attraction from beginning to