Trans­porter 3, pro­duced by Luc Besson and directed by Olivier Mega­ton, is an inter­na­tional prod­uct tai­lored for the Amer­i­can mar­ket. Despite its French locales, Ger­man cars, and adorably freck­led Ukrain­ian hot­tie, the hero and vil­lain are both quite Amer­i­can. The tit­u­lar Trans­porter is Frank Mar­tin (Jason Statham), a fighter and dri­ver par excel­lence who earns a lux­u­ri­ous but lonely exis­tence as an ask-no-questions courier. The events of his two pre­vi­ous mis­ad­ven­tures have reformed his amoral ways and loner habits, as evi­denced by his col­lab­o­ra­tive friend­ship with for­mer neme­sis Inspec­tor Tar­coni (François Berléand).

So in order for there to even be a Trans­porter 3, its plot must cor­ral this reformed man into a caper full of oppor­tu­ni­ties for car­nage and law­break­ing. The vil­lain­ous Amer­i­can John­son (Robert Knep­per) is con­ceived as Martin’s evil, less evolved twin: a mer­ce­nary like him, but unleav­ened by con­science. His ill-defined plan involves black­mail­ing Ukran­ian politi­cian Leonid Vasilev (Jeroen Krabbe) into allow­ing a giant cor­po­ra­tion to import a tanker full of bar­rels of toxic waste. At one point Mar­tin is men­aced by a truck full of the stuff on land, but the tanker hasn’t docked yet. Confusing.

Natalya Rudakova in Trans­porter 3

Statham is this generation’s Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Segal. He’s already been type­cast as the tough loner in a con­stant series of b-movies (some more B than oth­ers, but The Bank Job is a step up), but usu­ally light­ens things up with a hint of Jackie Chan-esque self-deprecation. He’s impec­ca­bly tai­lored, lean, and fero­ciously fit, look­ing and mov­ing more like a gym­nast than the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion of slow-moving body­builder action heroes. A good drink­ing game for any Statham film is to drink a shot every time his shirt comes off. You’re likely to get alco­hol poi­son­ing in this case.

One of the rea­sons I enjoy pro­ducer Luc Besson’s Trans­porter fran­chise is that I dis­like being expected to applaud the typ­i­cal movie action hero that stands back and shoots bad guys from afar. This applies to pretty much any Stal­lone and Schwarzeneg­ger film, but is also true of even James Bond (in which his fabled license to kill often trans­lates into mow­ing down rooms full of extras with machine gun fire — or in the case of Moon­raker, laser pis­tols) and Indi­ana Jones (audi­ences applaud him for shoot­ing a scimitar-wielding bad­die in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but really, is that fair?). In stark con­trast, Mar­tin almost never uses any weapon other than his own phys­i­cal­ity. Most of the vio­lence in the Trans­porter films is in the acro­batic, blood­less rock ‘em sock ‘em style of kung-fu flicks, lib­er­ally sea­soned with impres­sive auto­mo­bile car­nage. The first few min­utes of Trans­porter 3 fea­ture a sig­na­ture sequence in which Mar­tin dis­patches a room full of armed bad­dies using no tools save his own suit jacket. But I was star­tled to see Mar­tin actu­ally exe­cute a few evil­do­ers later in the film, some­thing I don’t recall him doing in the pre­vi­ous two. It’s wholly out of char­ac­ter, and spoils the fun.

It’s never long before Jason Statham’s shirt comes off

What dooms Trans­porter 3 to be the worst of the fran­chise is that there are sim­ply not enough action sequences, and what few there are are unin­spired. I recall only two more notable action sequences: in one, Mar­tin is teth­ered to his car by an explo­sive device (just roll with it), and must catch up to it on foot after it is stolen. Later, he launches it off a bridge onto the top of a speed­ing train, and then from there smashes it into the body of a detached pas­sen­ger car. For a movie so con­cerned with car chases, prod­uct it doesn’t help the audi­ence when most of the vehi­cles are dic­tated by prod­uct place­ment to be the same brand (Audi) and color (black with tinted windows).

The awk­ward, eyebrow-raising end­ing to Trans­porter 2 left it up in the air as to whether Mar­tin is gay or just an extreme loner. Sur­pris­ingly, Trans­porter 3 actu­ally revives that ques­tion and makes it its key sub­ject. When Vasilev’s hot freck­led daugh­ter Valentina (Natalya Rudakova) comes on to him, Mar­tin protests he’s “not in the mood” but cer­tainly, absolutely, pos­i­tively, no way no how, def­i­nitely not gay, how could you even ask, good grief. Well, that set­tles that ques­tion, in an rather dis­ap­point­ingly con­ven­tional man­ner. So the end of the film finds Mar­tin not only recon­firmed as a good guy, but also in a steady het­ero­sex­ual rela­tion­ship. A key com­po­nent of both the James Bond and Jason Bourne char­ac­ters is that their great­est loves were mur­dered, so they choose to be emphat­i­cally alone. Where can Besson take Frank Mar­tin in another sequel? Don’t expect Valentina to last long into Trans­porter 4.

Offi­cial movie site: www.transporter3film.com

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