Frank Martin is back…but not by choice. Transporter 3 begins with Jason Statham’s Frank Martin enjoying what appears to be semi-retirement by fishing with his only friend the French Inspector Tarconi and hanging out as his house watching fishing shows on TV. This all comes to an abrupt end when an acquaintance that he suggested to a client for a job because he wasn’t available, comes literally crashing through his wall. The next thing we know Frank wakes up in a hospital like room wearing an exploding bracelet. Frank is showed out to his car, which now contains a young woman named Valentina, two red bags, and a wireless transmitter set to blow his bracelet should he get more than 75 feet away from the vehicle. The job; Get to an undisclosed location with the cargo intact.
I’ll preface this by saying I was a fan of the first Transporter flick and LOVED the second. That being said…this was the first movie I’ve wanted to walk out of in the last five years. I even like to stay through shit like Disaster Movie just for the morbid curiosity of what were they going to do next, this flick did not even have that. There were absolutely no redeeming qualities about this movie except for the fact that Jason Statham and the Audi were in it. First off, I’ve said many times in the past that genre movies can get away with a lot if their specialty is done right, action does action and comedy does funny, ya know. Transporter 3, a movie that obviously is not going to win any Oscars for best screenplay, only has three real action sets and of those three two are exact copies of themselves and of scenes in the other Transporter movies. Here’s the scenario, the first two major action sets in the movie are the scene from Transporter 1 & 2 where the camera is at Frank’s back and the bad guys encircle him. He then fights them off, (one by one mind you, when will these guys learn to rush a mofo), using his suit in various ways and doing funny things like folding his suit jacket in the middle of the fight. Now, don’t get me wrong this was awesome the first time; hell it was still cool the second time but two more times in THE SAME FREAKING MOVIE!! c’mon, you guys aren’t even trying.
My next big issue with this flick was that they decided to make Frank become a romantic halfway through and basically break all the rules that he fought so hard to keep in the first two movies. It’s not even really that he breaks his rules, but that he does it for Valentina, this ass ugly bucket of yuck that the producers found in an eastern European alley somewhere. The character of Valentina would easily get on my top 5 list of most annoying movie characters of all time, and the first character since Jar Jar Binks to single handedly stain a legendary series. I’m not an extremely superficial person, I don’t think every actress has to be Jessica Alba, but DAMN, this chick is fugly. Now let me explain why this becomes a problem in this ACTION movie, literally 50% of the movie it seems is spent in a close up on her face and after about twenty minutes of this you start to wonder if the freckles engulfing her lips are going to come alive and attack Jason Statham so that maybe, just maybe we can have another action scene. Is that all? No my friends, I’m sorry, but it is not. They also decided to make Valentina Ukranian, and give her comically broken English to speak. Which truly is one of those things that’s only funny for about thirty seconds. When she starts to get into five minute monologues about roasted fish it just becomes painful. There were points where the audience was literally laughing out loud at how bad her lines were and then a few minutes later they were cringing because she was still talking and it was no longer funny. I could go on for another 2000 words about this chick but suffice to say she ruins the movie.
Other than the points already mentioned there is some SERIOUS suspension of disbelief issues, like when Frank jumps through his window, a window which has always been bulletproof so jumping through it would be a bit of a task, and about twenty other instances of comically unbelievable crap. As well as every other action movie cliché, bad one liner and cheap henchman from central casting you can think of. All of which would have been forgiven, mind you, had they had decent action scenes but they failed on the most basic of goals for this type of movie and I’m sorry but I can’t forgive them for that.
So, should you see this in the theater? What do you think? I would not even recommend watching this on TBS three years from now if you’re still up at four in the morning with a bad case of insomnia. You have no idea how disappointed I was as I walked out of that theater, not just by Luc Besson, but by Jason Statham. This is just as much his baby as it is anybody else’s, maybe even more so since this was his breakthrough series. He let them destroy the series for a paycheck and I just hope he’s got something good up his sleeve to make up for it.
1/10
I’ll preface this by saying I was a fan of the first Transporter flick and LOVED the second. That being said…this was the first movie I’ve wanted to walk out of in the last five years. I even like to stay through shit like Disaster Movie just for the morbid curiosity of what were they going to do next, this flick did not even have that. There were absolutely no redeeming qualities about this movie except for the fact that Jason Statham and the Audi were in it. First off, I’ve said many times in the past that genre movies can get away with a lot if their specialty is done right, action does action and comedy does funny, ya know. Transporter 3, a movie that obviously is not going to win any Oscars for best screenplay, only has three real action sets and of those three two are exact copies of themselves and of scenes in the other Transporter movies. Here’s the scenario, the first two major action sets in the movie are the scene from Transporter 1 & 2 where the camera is at Frank’s back and the bad guys encircle him. He then fights them off, (one by one mind you, when will these guys learn to rush a mofo), using his suit in various ways and doing funny things like folding his suit jacket in the middle of the fight. Now, don’t get me wrong this was awesome the first time; hell it was still cool the second time but two more times in THE SAME FREAKING MOVIE!! c’mon, you guys aren’t even trying.
My next big issue with this flick was that they decided to make Frank become a romantic halfway through and basically break all the rules that he fought so hard to keep in the first two movies. It’s not even really that he breaks his rules, but that he does it for Valentina, this ass ugly bucket of yuck that the producers found in an eastern European alley somewhere. The character of Valentina would easily get on my top 5 list of most annoying movie characters of all time, and the first character since Jar Jar Binks to single handedly stain a legendary series. I’m not an extremely superficial person, I don’t think every actress has to be Jessica Alba, but DAMN, this chick is fugly. Now let me explain why this becomes a problem in this ACTION movie, literally 50% of the movie it seems is spent in a close up on her face and after about twenty minutes of this you start to wonder if the freckles engulfing her lips are going to come alive and attack Jason Statham so that maybe, just maybe we can have another action scene. Is that all? No my friends, I’m sorry, but it is not. They also decided to make Valentina Ukranian, and give her comically broken English to speak. Which truly is one of those things that’s only funny for about thirty seconds. When she starts to get into five minute monologues about roasted fish it just becomes painful. There were points where the audience was literally laughing out loud at how bad her lines were and then a few minutes later they were cringing because she was still talking and it was no longer funny. I could go on for another 2000 words about this chick but suffice to say she ruins the movie.
Other than the points already mentioned there is some SERIOUS suspension of disbelief issues, like when Frank jumps through his window, a window which has always been bulletproof so jumping through it would be a bit of a task, and about twenty other instances of comically unbelievable crap. As well as every other action movie cliché, bad one liner and cheap henchman from central casting you can think of. All of which would have been forgiven, mind you, had they had decent action scenes but they failed on the most basic of goals for this type of movie and I’m sorry but I can’t forgive them for that.
So, should you see this in the theater? What do you think? I would not even recommend watching this on TBS three years from now if you’re still up at four in the morning with a bad case of insomnia. You have no idea how disappointed I was as I walked out of that theater, not just by Luc Besson, but by Jason Statham. This is just as much his baby as it is anybody else’s, maybe even more so since this was his breakthrough series. He let them destroy the series for a paycheck and I just hope he’s got something good up his sleeve to make up for it.
1/10
