| |
| James Carter | |
|---|---|
| Aliases | None |
| Gender | Male |
| Hair color | Black |
| Eye color | Brown |
| Relatives | Unnamed father (deceased) Unnamed Grandmother (?) Perry Carter (brother) |
| Affiliates | Inspector Lee (Partner) Tania Johnson (L.A.P.D. Partner) Genevieve (Girlfriend) |
| Occupation | Detective |
| Status | Alive |
| Appearances | Rush Hour Rush Hour 2 Rush Hour 3 |
| Portrayed by | Chris Tucker |
Detective James Carter is one of the main protagonists of the Rush Hour films. He is a detective for the Los Angeles Police Department (L.A.P.D.) in Los Angeles and is Chief Inspector Lee's partner and friend. James Carter appears in all three Rush Hour films. He is portrayed by Chris Tucker.
Character History
Before the Series
Little is known about Carter before the series, besides that his father was a cop who got killed during a routine traffic stop because his partner didn't help him and the suspect didn't want a ticket. Its also known that Carter has been in the L.A.P.D. for some time and doesn't like working with partners.
Rush Hour
- "Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth!?"
- ―Carter to Lee when he didn't respond to Carter
Carter's badge
Carter first appears in the first film, where he's undercover investigating the selling of explosive C4 from bomb maker Clive Cobb. After two cops appear, not realizing he's under cover, the operation went wrong for Carter with him accidentally blowing up Clive's car containing the C4. The papers obviously ran a story on the explosion Carter caused which annoyed his boss and made him want to get rid of Carter for a while. When the FBI phoned the L.A.P.D. for an officer to be used for the G14 Classified case (A fake title for the "case" of "baby sitting" Detective Inspector Lee), Carter was immediately assigned to which is where he meet Lee for the first time. Carter proceed to take Lee on a sightseeing tour of Los Angeles simultaneously keeping Lee away from the Consulate and contacting several of his underworld informants about the kidnapping.
Lee finally gets away from Carter and makes his way to the Chinese Consulate, where an anxious Han and a group of FBI agents are awaiting news about his daughter. Carter first notices that Lee is gone when the steering wheel to his car (which he handcuffed Lee to) goes missing. He later arrives at the Consulate with a tow truck to his car and is severely reprimanded by FBI agent in charge Warren Russ. Carter is also introduced to the Consul Solon Han. Lee explains to Han that Carter is very passionate about finding his daughter. Han then shakes Carter's hand saying that he has his gratitude. Carter then picks up the phone while trying to call his boss but finds himself talking to Sang the right hand man of Juntao, leader of a group of triads who kidnapped the daughter of the Consul.
Carter takes up Sang's ransom demand of $50 million and poorly arranges a drop at 620 South Broadway downtown.
When the FBI arrive at the agreed drop point, several agents go up to the top floor to arrest Sang, only to find a ringing phone. When they pick it up to answer, a bomb is detonated, killing the agents. Sang then came out of a hiding place and Lee chases him to an alley with Carter following them, where Sang manages to climb up to a building. He then attacked Lee with an axe, but fled as soon as he heard Carter calling for Lee. Sang continued to flee and even threw the axe which narrowly misses Lee and hits the wall next to Carter. Sang then nearly fell through a gap in the bridge of the building, dropping a remote detonator in the process. When Lee tried to follow he gets his foot stuck while picking up the detonator. Carter catches up to Lee only for them to fall through the bridge and on to the ground. A car nearly hits them but they move out of the way. Carter gets up and shoots at the back window of the car, which Sang escapes in. Lee and Carter soon learn from Carter's colleague, Detective Tania Johnson, that the detonator was a remote that can blow up explosives, like C4, which was the explosive Carter had not recovered while arresting Clive earlier in the film. This brings them to Clive where it is revealed that Juntao was behind the kidnapping. Following a lead to a restaurant in Chinatown, Carter and Lee begin to bond with Carter teaching Lee how to dance and Lee teaching Carter how to use martial arts moves. Lee even teaches Carter how to take a gun from a suspect.
Later, Carter enters the restaurant, posing as a lawyer, and pretends to look for Juntao. Sang sees him on the security camera and orders his henchmen to get Carter. Juntao tells him to hold it and he is revealed as Thomas Griffin, Consul Han's friend and the former British ruler of Hong Kong. He sees Lee on a security monitor and orders them to get Soo-Yung out of the building. He then tells Sang to make sure that Lee and Carter don't leave the restaurant alive.
Carter is brought up to meet with Sang and his men. Carter suddenly sees Griffin on the security monitor outside the restaurant but does not know that he's Juntao. Sang closes the monitor and he and his men menacingly stare down Carter. When asked why there are so quiet, he is pushed forward and a man kicks him. Carter tells the guy that it was childish. He pretend to claims that he's looking for Juntao but Sang pulls his gun on him. Carter says if he's going to kill him to put the gun down and fight him like a man. Before Carter would fight him another man kick's him in the chin. Carter does his famous line "which one of ya'll kick me?" The henchman in front of him replies "me". Carter briefly fights the men before he is kicked over a couch by the same man. While the henchman are checking him Sang approaches Carter and sees the FBI badge on his belt buckle revealing to him that Carter was the man he was on the phone with earlier. He then throws him a handkerchief and tells him to wipe himself off because he's bleeding (from his nose). Before Sang leaves he does the cut throat gesture as if he's ordering them to kill Carter. Lee arrives and enters the room disguised as a waiter from the restaurant. At Carter suggestion earlier he pretends to be with the L.A.P.D. before he drops the badge in embarrassment. Lee then rescues Carter by fighting the men before they are able to escape.
Sang later phoned the consul, angrily telling him that the ransom has been increased from $50 million to $70 million, and threatened to kill Soo-Yung if anything else goes wrong. Disgraced and guilt-ridden, Lee and Carter are ordered off the investigation and Han informs Lee that he will be sent back to Hong Kong, Lee sadly reveals to him that Juntao was behind Soo-Yung's kidnapping. Carter enters the room and apologizes for everything claiming that it was all his fault. Han tells him its a little too late for apologies. Finally realizing Soo-Yung safety is more important that his career a desperate Carter however refuses to drop the case and confronts Lee on his plane to enlist his help, and the two men decide to save Soo-Yung together, doing it for Han.
At the Los Angeles Convention Center which Han and Griffin are overseeing. Carter Lee and Johnson enter posed as guests for the evening. During Consul Han's speech to present the art work for five thousand years of china's history. He stops when he says that we can passed them on to our children feeling distraught over the disappearance of his own daughter. Griffin decides to take over from where Han left off. Carter suddenly recognizes Griffin as the man he saw on the security monitor at the Chinese restaurant from Chinatown and creates a scene where he warns the spectators about a threat of a bomb in the building and tells them to evacuate. In the confusion, Lee sees Sang handing Griffin a detonator identical to the one he and Carter had previously recovered, deducing that Griffin and Juntao are one and the same.
Juntao then threatens to detonate a bomb vest attached to Soo Yung if the delivery is interrupted. He also reveals that the priceless pieces that are apart of the exhibition were once part of his collection and he intends to get them back. During the stand-off, however, Carter manages to sneak out and locate Soo Yung. Carter proceeds to take the vest off her, but Soo Yung tells him that she heard them say that the vest will go off if anyone tries to take it off incorrectly. Carter then drives the van into the building and brings the bomb vest within range to kill Griffin and his men inside the exhibition.He challenges Griffin to push the detonator, but Griffin hesitates to do so. As Carter continues to demand that he push the button, Griffin decides he had enough and orders Sang to deal with Carter. Sang shoots at Carter, starting a gunfight between the FBI and Juntao's thugs.
During the fight, Lee and Johnson climb into the back of the van and Johnson manages to defuse the bomb and rescue Soo-Yung, but tells Lee that the vest still can be set off with the remote. Lee then takes the vest and pursues Griffin. Meanwhile, Griffin goes up to the upstairs control room and shoots the agents up there, including Russ. He then takes the briefcase with the money and leaves. When Sang came to get the rest of the money, he noticed Russ was still alive and tries to shoot him, but was stopped by Carter, who humorously came to the surviving officer's rescue and in a brief stand off, kills Sang.
Lee later kills Griffin by causing him to fall to his death in a water fountain. He is rescued by Carter shortly afterwards.
Han and Soo-Yung are reunited and Han sends Carter and Lee on vacation together to Hong Kong. Before leaving, Russ commends Carter for his efforts at the airport. He and Whitney offer him a place on the FBI, but Carter "politely" refuses, saying that he will always be loyal to the LAPD. On the plane, Carter shows off a couple of lines of Chinese to Lee (who is very impressed, as he had no idea Carter spoke Chinese). When Carter asks about the flight, Lee tells him that it may take fifteen hours, causing Carter to become surprised, and then he immediately requests a new seat as soon as Lee starts singing War.
Rush Hour 2
- "What's that in your...oh HELL NO."
- ―Carter when he saw Hu Li brought a bomb.
Four days after Rush Hour, Carter takes a vacation to Hong Kong with Lee however soon after they arrive a bomb explodes in the American Embassy killing two U.S. Custom agents in the process. Lee is assign to the case which becomes personal when it is discovered that it somehow involves Ricky Tan his late father's former partner of the Hong Kong Police Force. Tan who was never proven of having a role in Lee's father's death is now the leader of a group of triads who are the most deadly gang in China.
While doing the investigation into the case of the embassy explosion, Carter almost had a near death experience but luckily he left the police station just in time. When Lee went back to his office, he saw an explosion from his office which he thought that Carter was killed in it. When Lee was mourning Carter, his boss asked him if he's okay and he said that "all he wanted was some mu shu". When Lee was looking for Ricky Tan, he asked a henchman of Ricky Tan where he is, he replied, "I don't know". Lee suddenly heard Carter's voice, and found out that Carter could've survived the explosion. But Carter asks "who died?" Lee then answers that it was him who died. Hu Li the henchwoman of Ricky Tan is revealed later to have planted the bomb in Lee's office.
Rush Hour 3
- "I don't know what you're feeding him, but he's TOO DAMN BIG!"
- ―Carter to Yu about the Kungfu Giant
At the beginning of the film, Carter is no longer a detective but has been demoted to a patrolman and is placed on traffic duty. He arrests two women for denting a car, when one of them asks if he can give them a warning, Carter tells him that it depends and asks if they like Chinese. He calls Lee and tells him that he's picked up dates for them but Lee reveals that he's going to the world criminal court with Ambassador Solon Han and he immediately declines. Carter points out that he's still mad at him over accidentally shooting Isabella in the neck but Lee tells him that he doesn't want to talk about it. Carter claims that the incident was three years ago when they were in New York and that he should let it go. Lee claims Isabella was his girlfriend. Carter continues to persuade him but Lee hangs up on Carter.
When Carter hears on the police radio of Han's assassination attempt he uses the women's car to assist in Lee's pursuit of the assassin. As he arrives in an alley where the assassin reveals himself as Lee's Japanese foster brother Kenji, he ducks his head as Kenji shoots at the car. Carter nearly runs over Lee but he jumps on the car's hood while Kenji manages to escape. At the hospital it is revealed that Han survived but is out of surgery and that he will make a full recovery. Soo-Yung arrives at the hospital and asks Lee and Carter to make a promise to her that they will catch Kenji for her as he will stop at nothing until her father's dead.
Personality
Carter is a very bad-mannered cop, and whenever he's not fighting crime, he's actually causing crime.
Neglect for other Lives
Carter has poor courtesy for people in need of help and despite being a police officer, when he first hears about someone being held hostage, he ridicules that person. He didn't take Soo-Yung's hostage crisis seriously in the first film, as he nearly blew the phoned negotiation with Sang by annoying him with humor such as insulting Soo-Yung for not being a celebrity hostage ("50 million dollars? Who do you think you got? Chelsea Clinton?"). Near the climax of Rush Hour, Carter has Sang at gunpoint but Sang threatens to shoot Russ. Carter encourages him to do so anyway, claiming he hates Russ too.
Sexual Harassment
Carter often sexually harasses women. In RH1, he jokes to Johnson about telling everyone that he slept with her. In RH2, he hits on just about any Chinese woman in his sight, even Hu Li who tries to kill Lee and Carter. In RH3, Carter has 2 women arrested (Marsha and Zoe) and forces the two to go on a double date with him and Lee in exchange for their moving violation removed for crashing into another car during the rush hour. Later on, he lies to a group of French actresses that he is their new costume supervisor and forces them all to strip naked just for enjoyment.
Racism
Carter is a racist, especially towards Asian people mainly because he sees African-Americans as the superior race. Lee is obviously the first target of Carter's anti-Asian racism. As he always gloats about black people, Carter discriminates East Asians, mainly the Chinese, as being short in height, looking too identical to each other, cowardly, fond of eating bizarre very non-American foods and not knowing English well. In Rush Hour 3, while fighting the Kung-Fu giant, Carter claims that he "loves Chinese people", though this is a contradiction to all his disrespectful remarks about the Chinese. Out of 9/11-hysteria, Carter arrested 2 Iranians out of prejudice even though according to Officer Dieo they were actually scientists at UCLA who were researching cures.
Violence / Misconduct of Firearms
Carter also often pulls his gun out at people just to earn their respect/ obedience, even if what they did is only obnoxious and not illegal. In Rush Hour 1, he forced Lee at gunpoint to stop evading him back in Chinatown. In Rush Hour 3, he pulled out his gun at George just for dissing the NBA and Halle Berry.
Trivia
- Carter is somehow always blaming Lee for a mishap by saying "It's all your fault" but Lee doesn't seem to care.
- In the TV version of Rush Hour 3 in the Philippines, the part where he took off and tried dress the French women in the club was that the butts of the French women were covered to avoid the viewing of their private parts.
- One of Carter's most famous line is when he gets kicked by one of Juntao's men and he says "which one of y'all kicked me?".
- Sang, one of Juntao's henchmen from the first Rush Hour, is the only villain whom Carter actually killed.
- Lee taking Carter's gun (as if taking a gun from a suspect) was the same move Carter had done on one of Juntao's men. In an earlier scene Lee had taught him how to do it as they were practicing.
- After being demoted to a patrolman in Rush Hour 3, Carter still refers to himself as a Detective when arresting the two women at the intersection. Soo-Yung also refers to him as a Detective when reunited with him at the hospital. He was wearing his police uniform when at the hospital but in the next scene he is back in plain clothes suggesting that he was reinstated as a Detective by Captain Diel after deciding to help Lee with his investigation of Han's shooting.