On the heels of “Spider-Man 3,” “Shrek the Third,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” the final contestant in the summer blockbuster trio race has arrived. “Rush Hour 3,” is the latest installment in a film franchise that has already generated nearly $600 million worldwide at the box office. Executives at New Line Cinema and parent company Time Warner have gambled a rumored $120 million budget (a third of which covered co-stars Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan’s paychecks) that the easy-on-the-brain action comedy-formula that made the first two “Rush Hour” movies successful will also pay off in a three-quel. With director Brett Ratner returning to the helm and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson nearly carbon copying the previous two “Rush Hour” scripts, New Line’s suits have seen to it that the recipe has remained intact.

What drives the “Rush Hour” vehicles is the comedic contrast between Mr. Tucker’s freewheeling, trash-talking persona and Mr. Chan’s stoic, bemused, and unselfconsciously physical screen presence. In the six years since their last outing together, the 53-year-old Mr. Chan has made nearly a dozen movies, and his exhaustion is evident from the start of this new film. “Rush Hour 3” is Mr. Tucker’s first screen appearance since the previous “Rush Hour,” and his motor-mouth routine, if not fresh, is at least still vigorous.

In an opening scene, Detective Carter (Mr. Tucker) makes the most of a demotion to traffic detail by scoring phone numbers along with plate numbers after accidentally causing a fender bender involving two central-casting Los Angeles bachelorettes. Across town, Inspector Lee (Mr. Chan) screws up weightier responsibilities. Lee’s pledge to keep his friend and boss, Consul Han (Tzi Ma, absent since the first installment), safe long enough to announce the name of the head of an Asian crime Triad to the World Criminal Court goes the way of all such promises made in the first 10 minutes of action movies. With Consul Han on life support and his daughter Soo Young (Jingchu Zhang) in danger, Carter and Lee set out for Paris to uncover the identity of the Hong Kong Triad’s kingpin and pick up a take-out order of payback along the way.

This iteration’ s checkerboard of kicks, quips, and emptied clips is enlivened by the appearance of Max von Sydow in the ubiquitous turncoat official role he’s phoned in from “Three Days of the Condor” to “Minority Report,” director Roman Polanski as a politely sadistic French policeman, and Gallic leading man and sometime director Yvan Atal playing a virulently anti-American cab driver. The film’s relatively sturdy episodic construction is held together with a heavily slathered plot mortar involving Lee’s long lost brother (Hiroyuki Sanada), near romance with a mysterious bombshell named Genevieve (French model Noémie Lenoir, whose licentious overbite should itself be rated R), and near-death at the hands and feet of an assassin named Jasmine (Youki Kudoh). Is it a spoiler to reveal that the whole thing climaxes on the Eiffel Tower?

Though nothing particularly surprising happens, “Rush Hour 3,” like its siblings, is fizzy, frantic, and tolerably fun one moment, then shrill and contrived the next. What is surprising is how pleasantly, if unremarkably, the film chugs along. On internet blogs, the name Bret Ratner has taken on a hack director connotation that’s grown to almost Ed Wood proportions. The sybaritic frat boy image that Mr. Ratner recently satirized in a cameo on HBO’s “Entourage” has eclipsed a directorial reputation that, if nothing else, shows that he can keep undiscriminating audiences busy for 90 minutes.

Here, as in 2002’s “Red Dragon” and last summer’s final “X-Men” sequel, Mr. Ratner demonstrates an easy, uncluttered way with a widescreen frame and stages his PG-13 fight sequences and chases with an eye for story escalation as much as for spectacle or raw sensation. Instead of jabbing the audience with a confusing blur of multiple shaky camera angles and tight close-ups à la Michael Bay (and, to varying degrees, “Bourne” director Paul Greengrass and “Batman Begins” director Christopher Nolan), Mr. Ratner is content to let his combatants, not his camera, do the bludgeoning. The director’s affection for vintage ’60s and ’70s filmmaking is evident in his oddly retro editorial restraint, a dialogue shout-out to director Don Siegel and the use of “Bullet” and “Dirty Harry” composer Lalo Schifrin.

A digestible, lightweight froth of shaggy dog self-parody, cartoon violence, and travelogue polish, “Rush Hour 3” is not so much state-of-the art filmmaking as it is state-of-the-industry assembly line.

“The guns, the shooting!” exclaims Mr. Attal’s cabdriver George when he finally sees the light. “Now I know what it means to be an American!” Maybe so. Unquestionably, he now knows what it means to be in an American franchise action film. Stateside audiences will already know everything they need to about “Rush Hour 3” before the lights go down. Odds are they’ve seen it all at least twice before and that it doesn’t matter.