As a precocious youngster growing up in Miami, Florida, director Brett Ratner channeled his energy into becoming one of the hottest young directors of his time. After spending his childhood enthusiastically filming his friends with a camcorder, yet not-so-enthusiastically doing his schoolwork, Ratner was accepted to New York University, a school he chose primarily because it was Martin Scorsese's alma mater, at the age of 16. He was required to pitch his burgeoning directing skills as worthy of admittance to the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at NYU due to his lackluster academic record (after being initially rejected he begged the dean to view his films to keep him from "living on my mom's couch in Miami the rest of my life."). NYU was impressed enough to let Ratner enroll, despite being the youngest member of his class.
His senior year at NYU, Ratner applied for dozens of scholarships to help fund his senior project. He was granted only one, from Steven Spielberg's production company, Amblin Entertainment. The project was a documentary about a child star made famous by appearing in Underwood lunch meat commercials. Ratner received considerable attention for his film, titled "Whatever Happened to Mason Reese" and through his friendship with hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, began directing videos.
Over the next decade, Ratner made more than 100 videos, working with the industry's hottest stars including Wu Tang Clan, Jay Z, D'Angelo, Puff Daddy, Mariah Carey and Madonna. His break into features came when the original director of "Money Talks" dropped out of the project and Ratner was brought in. He made an impressive debut with this film which revitalized Charlie Sheen's career and also starred Chris Tucker, Heather Locklear and Paul Sorvino.
Ratner's next project was directing Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in a unique fish-out-of water/buddy comedy, "Rush Hour" (1998). Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Ratner was a hot director. "Rush Hour"(1998) would end up earning $250 million worldwide and was New Line Cinema's highest grossing film up to that date. The careers of Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan also took off and plans were immediately made for a sequel. Expectations were high for the second installment of this action-comedy series, which paired the high-pitched, wise-cracking Tucker with the naively hyper martial arts master Chan. But no one could have predicted the success of "Rush Hour 2" (2001) which had the highest opening comedy weekend box office gross (on a non-holiday) in history. Ratner was established as formidable directing talent by the time he reached his 31st birthday.
In between the "Rush Hour" movies, Ratner sought a departure from urban and action comedies. After a fair amount of convincing on his part, Ratner was taken on board to direct "The Family Man" (2000), starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni. The film, a "It's A Wonderful Life" tale of what-might-have-been, had modest success with the box office and critics. However, the phenomenal success of "Rush Hour 2" left no question where Ratner's strength as a director laid. He landed the much-coveted director's job on "Red Dragon" (lensed 2002), the prequel to "Silence of the Lambs" (1991) starring Anthony Hopkins and Edward Norton along with Emily Watson and Harvey Keitel. At the end of 2002 Ratner was demonstrating his potential versatility juggling two disparate, long-adorning projects: Warner Bros.' much-delayed update of the "Superman" franchise but he eventually became one of several directors to exit the project, instead helming the amiable but unambitious caper film "After the Sunset" (2004) starring Pierce Brosnan as a retired jewel thief living in paradise and tempted by one last tantalizing score.
Ratner finally got his crack at a superhero franchise when he was named to helm "X3" (lensed 2005), the third installment of the popular "X-Men" films. Ironically, Ratner was asked to tackle X-Men after the film series' original director, Bryan Singer, moved on to shoot "Superman Returns"a project Ratner had left. In effect, the directors switched projects. But Ratner was at a disadvantage from the startthe movie was already in preproduction, giving him only six weeks to prepare. To make matters worse, the Internet was abuzz with members of "X-Men" geekdom deriding the studios choice of directorssame as they did with Singer. Ratner even received a phone call from his predecessor advising him to ignore the Internet rabble. Meanwhile, the cast and crewalready in Vancouver awaiting wordbreathed a sigh of relief after an uncertain period of having no director. Ratner brought to the set a hyperactive, almost childlike energy to the filmfar different than Singers laidback, intellectual vibe.
When finished, X-Men: The Last Stand blended the usual cast of characters with several new ones, many of whose loyalties are called into question when a cure for their mutations found, giving them a choice between retaining their strange powersand their marginalized place in societyor give up their abilities to become fully human. Meanwhile, Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the evil Magneto (Ian McKellan) prepare to wage a war to end all wars. Reviews for the thirdand perhaps final (though definitely the last for Ratner)installment were tepid, with most critics lauding the visual effects, but very few saying it was an improvement over X2: X-Men United (2003). As he did the standard press junkets for the X-Men opening, Ratner prepared to shoot his next project, Rush Hour 3, which was set for release sometime in 2007.
Copyright © Baseline 2006.