December 15, 2008

Weekend In Reviews

Transporter 3: The Transporter movies are not what you'd call long on story. They are really only enjoyable if you completely suspend your disbelief and, in fact, watch them with your brain turned off. Guy drives nice car real fast, handily beats everyone up, is in close proximity to attractive women who can't keep their hands off of him, the end. That said, the first Transporter movie had a very loose interpretation of a plot with a guy who was selling people into slavery or something and his associates and he hired Frank (Jason Statham) to drive his daughter - zipped in a bag don'tchaknow - from point A to point B to keep her from gumming up the works of their operation. Transporter 2 finds Frank working temporarily as the driver for a wealthy and influential family in Florida when some nefarious people kidnap the family's son on Frank's watch. In both cases, Frank saves the day and gets hit on by the distressed damsels ("daughter in bag" and "mother of abducted boy" as their characters might have been billed). But while all that is happening, there are really well choreographed fight scenes and Jason Statham being all...Jason Stathamy.

Transporter 3 definitely has Jason Statham and his patented brand of totally bald, British scorching hotness, but that's kind of all it has. The story never did make sense to me - he's transporting the kidnapped daughter of a Russian something-or-other in an effort to bully him into letting some ships carrying toxic waste dock somewhere. It was never made clear what the big to-do was with the toxic waste and why they HAD to dock the ships in Russia or why they would go to such great lengths AFTER they set the ships to sailing rather than before, or, frankly, why Robert Knepper's character was involved at all. I think the writers (Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen) were clearly just out of ideas three movies into a series about a guy who drives good. But the bigger problem was director Olivier Megaton and his all-over-the-place cuts during the fight scenes. If there is one thing I can count on from the first two Transporter movies, it's to be able to clearly see Jason Statham do unbelievable shit while kicking the crap out of random bad guys. I mostly just saw a whole lot of quick-cut fists and feet during this movie.

The movie was a dud overall but Jason Statham is still worth watching it for (you could always do worse than a movie that involves those back muscles!), but I'd highly recommend waiting until you can do it for free rather than paying good money for it. If you need an immediate Statham fix, rent The Transporter or The Italian Job or some other movie he's in that doesn't totally suck.

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