Transporter 3

Transporter 3

By Jonathan Fisher, February 9th, 2009


The day I can't allow myself to get excited about movies like Transporter 3 is the day I'll probably stop reviewing movies. On the other hand, the day that I cave in and allow a movie as delightfully vacuous as this one to earn itself a positive review is the day that I should stop reviewing movies. Transporter 3 is not a terrible film, but it's not exactly trying to be a great one, either. I always say that star ratings are relative (and are usually nonsense) and should be portioned out depending on what the film is trying to achieve, and how close it comes to achieving it. Transporter 3 tries its hardest, and succeeds, to be a two star movie.

This third instalment of the Transporter series begins with Frank Martin (Jason Statham) -- such a boring name for such an exciting chap -- in blissful retirement, fishing with his French friend Tarconi (Francois Berleand) and falling asleep in front of sport in his beautiful lakeside villa. One evening a car comes crashing through his wall. Its occupant is a friend and fellow transporter (if you don't know what a transporter is, just go and watch the first films) who he pawned his last mission off onto. He has a girl in the back seat of the car, Valentina (Natalya Rudakova) and says he needs help because the mission has gone to hell. Martin orders an ambulance to take his friend away -- which is when he discovers an electronic arm band on the girl that explodes if its wearer goes further than a certain distance from the car. He assumes, and discovers too late, that his friend was wearing one too.

Martin, after a lot of humphing and impeccably coreographed fight scenes, is eventually rehired by a mysterious blackmailer named Johnson (Robert Knepper), who is blackmailing a Ukrainian politician and environmental reformer played by Jeroen Krabbe into signing documents allowing a ship to dock several containers of toxic material in Odessa. Martin's job is to safely transport the girl to Odessa. Every time Martin goes off the course set for him by his boss, Johnson sends an apparently endless number of thugs to beat sense back into him. Which begs the question -- with all of his apparently infinite resources, could Johnson have thought of a better way to transport the girl than cuffing her and her driver to a BMW and forcing them to drive all the way across Europe?

None of the above plot really matters, because this film, like the previous Transporter movies, uses its plot as an umbrella for the requisite chase and action scenes. The movie's director, Olivier Megaton (you can bet that's a stage name for an action director) stages sequences that are, for all intents and purposes, completely impossible. There is a scene in which Frank balances his BMW on the two wheels on the left hand side of the car and balances the vehicle while driving in between two trucks. I actually laughed audibly when this happened on screen, but then I realised I was actually impressed. What I had just seen could never happen in this real world, but there it was, right on screen. How on earth did Megaton and his stunt actors and choreographers do it?

If the action scenes are fun to watch and effective, just about everything else in the film is not. Statham is his usual grand self, and with his bulging muscles, gravelly Cockney voice and "I'm going bald but I don't give a crap and I'm still sexy" demeanour, is the perfect action hero. Unfortunately the scenes between him and Valentina don't work. Rudakova is a very cute actress (when was the last time we saw so many freckles on a sexy supporting starlet?) and probably has big things ahead for her, but she is terrible in this role, and the romance between her and Statham is a total dud. Some of the lines that are given to her by the script don't help her, so I guess it's not entirely her fault. The script was co-written by Luc Besson (who has co-written and produced all three Transporter movies), and the relationship between Valentina and Frank Martin smacks of Besson's bizarre masterpiece Leon: The Professional. While Rudalenko might be as cute as Natalie Portman, she doesn't have the acting chops and most of her scenes with Statham are bizarre rather than moving or erotic.

You may ask, if I enjoyed the action sequences and Statham's performance, why have I given the film a negative review? Surely a dud romance doesn't matter all that much in a film like this? You probably have a point. There's a part of me that loved Transporter 3 for what it is and wants to give it four stars for being an enjoyable thrill-ride. Another part of me wants to give it zero stars for its formula and hackneyed plotting. I think two stars is a good compromise.