Damaged goods

No one should settle for a film like Transporter 3. One might argue you should accept the film for what it is and try to enjoy it - but you shouldn't. If there's one thing the Bourne series proved, it's that action and brains aren't incompatible. Apparently, director Olivier Megaton (Angie) doesn't care.

Probably the biggest trademark of the Transporter series has been its patently ridiculous stunts. In The Transporter, Jason Statham (War) deflected a rocket with a plate. In Transporter 2, he unhooked a bomb from underneath his car by flipping the vehicle onto a crane. And in Transporter 3, he uses the air from his tires to inflate a duffle bag and then uses it to buoy his car from the bottom of a lake. All this is performed underwater, while the car is sinking.

Perhaps in Transporter 4 - if there is one - the filmmakers will quit messing around and just have Statham grow wings and fly out of trouble.

The preceding examples all illustrate one thing: convenient lack of logic. The Transporter films have never deemed it important to come up with clever solutions to seemingly inescapable problems, instead relying on impossible solutions. This denies the viewer the pleasure of wondering how the hero will get out of the next jam - a staple of action films.

Transporter 3 essentially regurgitates the plots of two previous Statham films, the first in the series and the unrelated Crank. In Transporter, Statham's character, driver Frank Martin, has to transport a package that ends up being a girl, who he eventually falls in love with. We're back to it - almost exactly - in Transporter 3, though now there's a Crank-like twist. Instead of having to keep his heart rate at a certain level (as in Crank), Statham has to stay at least 75 feet away from the car at all times, or he dies.

OK, so the plot is silly, but the fighting is probably good, right? Well, if there is one bonus to the Transporter films, they generally give you at least a fairly good guess as to who is punching whom in the fight scenes (something seemingly absent from most action films).

The problem is the action isn't top notch, despite the contribution of long-time martial arts choreographer Corey Yuen (War). It's unfortunate, because Transporter 3 really is just about killing time until the next fight.

A number of successful films have used this formula, but most of them have impressive fight choreography and superb martial artists. Ong-Bak and The Protector are perfect examples of movies where any second that does not involve fighting is completely worthless. But the fighting is so jaw-droppingly amazing it doesn't matter.

Transporter 3 tries to fill the non-fighting screen time with a love story between Frank and an English-impaired redhead named Valentina (newcomer Natalya Rudakova). And of course, it's not believable. We'll give Rudakova a break, since this is her first film - and she acts like it.

Their romance consists mostly of her popping an ecstasy pill, getting drunk, coercing Frank into stripping by stealing his car keys and getting busy in the backseat of his car. When Frank initially refuses Valentina's sexual advances, she pressures him by asking, "You are the gay?" to which Statham deadpans, "I am not the gay." Casablanca, it isn't.

Main baddie Johnson (Robert Knepper, Prison Break) basically mistakes speaking in a deep voice as a replacement for personality. In goofball action pictures like this one, a great scenery-munching villain can keep a viewer watching; unfortunately, Knepper stays on a single note.

And lead Statham continues to waste the promise he showed as a sarcastic narrator in Snatch and self-destructing gambler in Revolver. Statham's Crank was his rare successful foray into straight action, mostly because it let him be a little funny. As a no-nonsense driver in the Transporter films, he is almost completely flat, both as a character and performer.

Perhaps the saving grace might be the car chases? Nope.

On the bright side, unlike the car chases in Quantum of Solace, you can actually comprehend the visual geography of the chases in Transporter 3. But many of these chases completely disregard any and all forms of logic. In one, Statham balances the car on two wheels for seemingly 10 minutes; in another, the chase takes place on top of a train.

If there is a positive side to Transporter 3, it's François Berléand (of the previous Transporter films) as the detective Tarconi. Berléand is the only person in the film actually bringing a personality to the table, and his bemused looks seem wholly appropriate for such a nonsensical movie.

The audience could be forgiven for having the same expression.

dan.benamor@gmail.com

1.5 out of 5 stars