It's hard to pass up on a good Jackie Chan movie, especially when that movie is the 1998 film Rush Hour and the following sequels. Rush Hour became a cult classic film starring Chris Tucker as Detective James Carter and Jackie Chan as Chief Inspector Lee.
The films follow a common storyline throughout all three films. Carter and Lee team up to take down criminal organizations that pose a threat to U.S. national security. The film is full of action, comedy and notorious villains. While each villain has masterminded their plan to perfection with the help of skilled henchmen, some did better than others. Here's a list of all the villains in the Rush Hour franchise, ranked according to how well they managed to commit crimes and thwart suspicion.
Clive Cobb
While Clive Cobb (Chris Penn) isn't a mastermind of crime, much less the main villain in Rush Hour, he still deserves some credit. Detective Carter goes undercover to find a bomb supplier in Los Angeles. It happens to be Clive.
Clive ranks last on the list due to the fact that he wasn't that discreet in meeting with Carter. They meet in an open parking lot of a diner and opened his trunk full of C4. When they are confronted by police, James could have easily derailed the situation, but Clive took matters into his own hands and shoots an officer. He then unsuccessfully gets into a car accident leading to his arrest.
Dragon Lady Jasmine
In Rush Hour 3, Carter and Lee take their investigation of Shy Shen to Paris. When Lee follows Dragon Lady Jasmine (Youki Kudoh) in a back room, she surprise attacks him. She manages to convince Lee that she has information about the location of Shy Shen completely unaware of who she really is.
When she gets him alone, Lee discovers that she is actually a trained assassin. To give her more props, she is also working for Kenji. Near the end of the film, she is responsible for keeping Soo-Yung (Zhang Jingchu) hostage but makes a fatal mistake that leads to her death.
Steven Reign
There are multiple working villains in Rush Hour 2 and one of them is Steven Reign (Alan King). While investigating Ricky Tan (John Lone), a leader of the Triads, for government bombings, Lee and Carter set their sights on another villain. Carter explains that behind every criminal organization there is a rich white man.
Steven Reign is a billionaire who teams up with Ricky Tan to launder millions of dollars through one of his casinos, The Red Dragon. While Reign does get some props for being able to take part in a larger criminal scheme, he falls a bit short when he tries to escape with the silver plates needed to print money. He didn't expect Tan to double-cross him.
Isabella Molina
Isabella Molina (Roselyn Sánchez), in Rush Hour 2, isn't necessarily a villain seeing as she is an undercover Secret Service agent. While she was undercover, she did play the role of a villain convincingly. Molina managed to infiltrate Reign and Tan's plan to launder superbills. She becomes close to Reign's and develops enough trust to handle parts of the operation.
Molina manages to thwart Carter and Lee's suspicion, twice. They confront her about her involvement, where she admits to being an undercover agent and lets them in on the operation. Later on, she double-crosses them and helps in having them kidnapped.
Hu Li
Despite Hu Li (Zhang Ziyi) being a ruthless henchman, you can't help but give some applause for her work. Hu Li is Ricky Tan's right hand and one of the top Triad members. She gets her ranking due to the fact that she is the one who executes and is in charge of a majority of the criminal acts.
She is responsible for disguising herself to strategically place both bombs at the United States Consulate General and at the Hong Kong Police Force. Not to mention, she is also responsible for trying to kill Lee by placing a detonation bomb in his mouth and taping his mouth shut. One of her main jobs was to shoot her boss, Ricky Tan. That's a dedicated villain.
Sang
In Rush Hour, Sang (Ken Leung) became a notorious villain in the film and is the one people often remember when it comes to the franchise as a whole. He deserves his current ranking as one of the top intelligent villains due to his ability to completely take away suspicion from the real main villain. Carter and Lee believe Sang to be the one behind the kidnapping of the Chinese diplomat's daughter.
Sang is responsible for carrying out the kidnapping and for being the one in charge of the ransom. He is also behind executing the bombing of a building that kills multiple FBI agents. Above all, he is given complete control over eliminating Carter in the popular Chinese restaurant scene.
Ricky Tan
Ricky Tan plays an interesting role in Rush Hour 2. To start things off on his level of evil, he happens to be Lee's father's old partner. His intelligence meter goes up when he reveals that he managed to evade the police into finding out he was the one who killed Lee's father.
Tan is the criminal mastermind behind laundering counterfeit superdollars and stealing the silver printing plates. He successfully brings in Reigns to do most of the dirty work. He also plans for Hu Li to shoot him to have Lee and Carter believe he is dead to move his plan forward without interruption. To top it off, he is also one of the leaders of the Triads and the Hong Kong Police have unsuccessfully been able to tie him to any crime that would lead to his arrest.
Kenji
Rush Hour 3 brings an interesting surprise when audiences discoer that the main villain, Kenji (Hiroyuki Sanada) is Lee's foster brother. He ranks high on the list due to the fact that he is a leader of the Triads. He is a skilled assassin who tries to kill Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma) during his speech about Shy Shen at the World Criminal Court. Unlike other villains, Kenji doesn't hide his plan or who he is.
He sends multiple assassins to kill Soo-Yung who has a letter from her father that could reveal the location of Shy Shen. Kenji must find Shy Shen, which holds the names of all Triad leaders, and destroy it as said through tradition. In the end, Kenji kidnaps Soo0Yung in exchange for the list. Pretty smart move seeing as Soo-Yung is important to Lee and Carter.
Varden Reynard
While Kenji was the main evil villain and mastermind in the film, there was actually someone else behind the scenes as well. This person deserves being runner up because of his ability to completely avoid detection. For Soo-Yung's safety, she is taken to the French Embassy to be looked after by the French ambassador and chairman of the World Criminal Court, Varden Reynard (Max von Sydow).
He plans a bomb to explode at the consulate in order to fool Lee and Carter that he is in danger. In reality, Reynard was working alongside Kenji to find Shy Shen. Lee and Carter discover this when they bring Shy Shen to Reynard, but he falters in playing coy about Shy Shen being a woman.
Thomas Griffin/ Juntao
Juntao aka Thoams Griffin takes the cake for the most ruthless, conniving and intelligent villain in the franchise. Thomas Griffin is a British Commander who works closely with Consul Han to retrieve stolen Chinese artifacts from Juntao. In reality, he was Juntao all along and plans the kidnapping of Consul Han's daughter.
He is responsible for the whole criminal scheme that occurs in Rush Hour. Throughout the whole film, Carter and Lee assume Juntao to be Chinese and look for suspects matching those markers. No one suspected Griffin to be the leader of a large criminal organization. He also works closely with Consul Han to help convince him to pay the ransom. He also stages an exhibit of the artifacts in order to steal them back. He had everyone in the palm of his hand the entire time.