TRANSPORTER 3: PROCRASTINATION THAT YOU PAY FOR
March 2nd 2009 08:32
Jason Statham returns as Frank Martin in Transporter 3
Luc Besson’s Transporter series is not known for realism, but rather economical plots, increasingly outrageous action stunts and supposedly turning Jason Statham into a gay icon. Transporter 3 – rightly or wrongly, but certainly for the worse – tries to take things in a slightly different direction. The economical plots don’t make sense any more and the stunts have become so flipping unbelievable that you laugh for all the wrong reasons. Also, Frank Martin gets it on – with a girl.
In Transporter 3, former SAS operative and Burnout 4 world record-holder Frank Martin (Statham) is strong-armed into transporting the kidnapped daughter of Leonid Vasilev (Jeroen Krabbé), the head of the Ukrainian EPA, from Marseilles to Odessa by a shady group of international terrorists who aim to dump large quantities of toxic waste in the former ‘bread basket’ of the Soviet Union. Martin initially palms the bad guys off onto an associate, who turns out to be such an awful driver that on the trans-European odyssey he manages to crash his car into Frank’s house. Extra shitty by this stage, the bad guys, lead by the sinister Mr Johnson (Robert Knepper), kidnap Martin and force him into completing the assignment, equipping both him and his feisty passenger, Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), with bracelets that will explode if they venture more than 75 feet away from the car. Thankfully, Martin drives fast and Valentina enjoys chewing on uppers, so stops for pretzels and Turkish delight should be unnecessary.
Directed by the awesomely named Olivier Megaton, Transporter 3 is one of the most abysmal wastes of time you could possibly encounter. So worthless is it, that sitting through this film is pretty much just pure procrastination on doing something more worthwhile, like trying to stick your toe in your ear. Megaton’s work is bad, but blame should probably start with Besson and his co writer, Robert Mark Kamen. With a story built on a simple premise, the screenplay unnecessarily complicates some elements of the tale while not making enough of others. There are pointless action scenes, while at the same time not enough is done with Martin and Valentina’s exploding bracelets, notwithstanding a rad-to-the-power-of-sick scene where Martin gets ditched in a market, having to endo and flipout his way on a borrowed freestyle BMX back to the escaping Audi. Muddied motivations and inelegant plot holes abound in Transporter 3, not to mention an unlikely case of Stockholm Syndrome and some excruciatingly embarrassing purple dialogue between the two travellers.
All this would perhaps be okay if the action scenes were up to scratch. Unfortunately, they’re not. The hand-to-hand combat is undoubtedly well-choreographed and at one stage includes the novel idea of Martin fending off attackers by shedding items of clothing, but this good work is lost in the confusing camera work and ADD editing. The chase scenes aren’t any better, with one set piece in the middle of the film standing out for its unintentional ordinariness. Herky-jerky camera work once again dominates as Martin fends off some henchmen who work for the good guys, even though they’re kind of bad because they shot a cop – yeah, I didn’t really get that either. It’s a great illustration of how what is supposed to be an exciting scene can, through fuzzy character logic and over-staged stunts, turn out to be entirely boring. Also, I’d never thought under cranking the camera would turn into a legitimate stylistic technique.
Some stuntmen try to abandon the set.
The players themselves are one of Transporter 3’s less disastrous aspects, even if the characters that they play are barely pencil smudges on the page. Robert Knepper is an effective Machiavellian bad guy, while Dutch veteran Jeroen Krabbé always knows how to harness his intimidating natural gravitas. Newcomer Natalya Rudakova doesn’t survive so well, but a lot of this is probably due to the disastrous lines she is fed by the script. Statham himself brings great presence to the role of Frank Martin, but perhaps it’s time for the Brit to find a more effective vehicle for his physicality. Statham, like countryman Daniel Craig, is a great throwback to brutish street brawlers such as Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, but movies like Transporter 3 do little justice to that fantastic quality.
Robert Knepper struggles against a poorly written character to escape proceedings with a sliver of dignity.
Ultimately, Transporter 3 is able to be sat through, even if only as a piece of curiosity to see how far Besson and his cohorts can push the boundaries of ‘anti-movie.’ It says a lot when this film is even a slap in the face to the rather mild but efficient ambitions of the series that spawned it; you have to wonder how such a disjointed and poorly scripted movie got made. You wouldn’t put it past the producers to try and dig a fourth film out of this franchise, but for Jason Statham’s sake one hopes he finds somewhere else to utilise his more brawny acting instincts.
Check out the preview for Transporter 3 below:
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Mountain Fog
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
I think this is a movie that'll exit my memory as soon as I close this page...
Comment by Matt Shea
Comment by MVD
Smartly, the folks at Lionsgate avoided the inferior nonsense of Speilberg, Coppola, or Polanski, heading straight for the master: Olivier Megaton. Perhaps McG had errands to run that day.
Comment by Matt Shea
Comment by David O'Connell
20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic
I can handle Statham in anything - Cellular for example was decent fun, and The Bank Job, which I'm yet to see, is supposed to be better than average. Crank though was as bad as action films get, and admittedly he has a kind of charisma that borders on something close to primitive!
Comment by Matt Shea