How Rush Hour made Jackie Chan a Hollywood superstar, and why it wasn’t enough to stop him returning to Hong Kong

After making his mark with Rumble in the Bronx, Chan shot to fame in the West when he starred in 1998’s Rush Hour with Chris Tucker. But it wasn’t all roses

Apart from keeping up with Tucker’s dialogue on set, the shorter Hollywood action scenes didn’t suit Chan, who decided not to abandon Hong Kong for the US

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Jackie Chan (right) and Chris Tucker in a still from Rush Hour. The 1998 blockbuster catapulted Chan to Hollywood superstardom, but it wasn’t enough to make him abandon Hong Kong’s movie industry. Photo: New Line Cinema

Published: 8:15am, 21 Apr 2024Updated: 9:51am, 21 Apr 2024

Perhaps because of his early interactions with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan always wanted to make it big in the United States. One of the reasons that Chan signed with Golden Harvest in the late 1970s was that the studio said it would try to make him an international star.

That first attempt, which included 1980’s The Big Brawl and 1985’s The Protector, fell flat, and Chan gave up on the idea of achieving fame in the West, spending the rest of the 1980s and the early 1990s consolidating his position as Asia’s number-one superstar.

Chan became so popular in Asia, he didn’t feel the need to join fellow luminaries like John Woo Yu-sum and Chow Yun-fat in the local exodus to Hollywood in the early 1990s. Instead, Chan found foreign success his own way, with the Hong Kong-produced hit Rumble in the Bronx.

Rumble in the Bronx was essentially a Hong Kong film – it was produced by Golden Harvest – that was shot in Canada and specifically designed to please a US audience.

Rush Hour (1998) Official Trailer - Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker Movie HD

Even after that film’s success, Chan did not focus on America, making Hong Kong films Thunderbolt, First Strike, Mr. Nice Guy and Who am I? Always confident, Chan waited for Hollywood to come to him – which it did, in the shape of the cheerful buddy-cop comedy Rush Hour.

Rush Hour was Chan’s first US film after Rumble in the Bronx established him in America. Produced by New Line Cinema, it was a fully fledged US studio movie, and was a hit, taking over US$140 million at the US box office.