Rush Hour 3

When a Chinese mastermind flees to Paris, it is up to Chief Inspector Lee (Chan) and Detective Carter (Tucker) to track down the criminal and return him to justice. The crime-fighting duo travel to the City of Lights and get caught up in an explosive battle between French Police, the notorious Chinese organized crime syndicate, The Triads, and two beautiful femmes fatales. With everybody stuck in Rush Hour traffic and kung-fu fighting atop the Eiffel Tower, Lee and Carter may find it more difficult than 1, 2, 3 to catch their man. (Stacey Pendry)

Special features include commentary from Director Brett Ratner and Writer Jeff Nathanson, the original theatrical trailer, additional previews, outtakes, seven deleted/alternate scenes with optional commentary by Ratner and Nathanson, the Making Of Rush Hour 3 featurette (87 minutes), a Visual Effects Reel (two minutes), and Le Rush Hour Trois Production Diary (65 minutes).

The anamorphically enhanced 2.33:1 DVD looks quite good, with deep, solid black levels and good shadow delineation, creating a highly dimensional-looking image. Details are captured well, with good resolution helping deliver the fine textures to the screen. Colors are nicely balanced, and fleshtones look accurate. Contrast is rendered well, giving the image a natural appearance. Edge enhancement is minor, but noticeable at times, and while minor pixilation can be noticed, it isn't much of a distraction. The VC-1-encoded Blu-ray Disc looks superb, with very good color balance and nicely rendered contrast. Black levels are deep and resolution is good. There are occurrences when sharp edges can have a digitized, stair-stepped appearance, but they are minor and generally not overly problematic. Occasionally the picture can look slightly soft as well. (Danny Richelieu)

The Dolby® Digital Surround EX™ 5.1-channel and DTS® ES™ 6.1-channel encodings feature a broad front stage with good surround envelopment, making for a lively experience. Fidelity is quite good in both releases, but the DTS version has a slight refinement in overall fidelity, with a slight layer of shuffling distortion that can be heard in the Dolby encoding removed. Bass is deep and tight, with good tonality and balance. Still, the LFE channel is not incorporated with much vigor. The discrete center surround of the DTS encoding does not add much over the matrix-derived center surround in the Dolby encoding, but both provide better surround imaging over not having that extra channel. We still do not have the ability to fully decode the Blu-ray Disc's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1-channel encoding, but the core DTS stream that is extracted sounds superb. Like the DVD's DTS ES encoding, fidelity is pristine, bass is tight, and the mix is very lively. (Danny Richelieu)