'Transporter 3' delivers action and more action

There is a sub-genre of action cinema emerging these days that I like to call uber-action. It is the outcome of young (and some old) directors who experienced the amazing action cinema of the 80’s and 90’s and wanted even more from their action movies. Directors who saw kung-fu, gunfights and Bond for the past twenty or so years and wondered why it was that a man has never barrel rolled a car in order to knock a bomb stuck on the bottom of said car off (Transporter 2). It also helps that skydiving gunfights (Shoot Em’ Up) are now technologically possible and that Crank, a film which is the epitome of uber-action, was so damn good.

In case you couldn’t tell the great star of this new sub-genre is Jason Statham who was the star of the film that most likely officially ushered in the style, Transporter. Now he returns in the third in the continually underrated action series, Transporter 3, which cranks up the action to even greater levels of uberness and yet still tries to make Statham driver character more human.

If you missed the first two films then you should go out and see them as they both have some of the best car chases around and, surprisingly, some of the best fight sequences in recent cinema. Frank Martin (Statham) is a professional driver that pulls of nefarious jobs that are mostly not legal. He’s got a heart of gold though, so it’s OK to like him. This time around he gets involved with some bad guys who want to pressure a Russian leader into not passing some environmental laws that would limit their companies ability to dump toxic waist there.

Enter Frank who is blackmailed into driving the package from point A to point B. He also has a bomb strapped to his wrist which will go off if he gets to far away from his car. This makes for some seriously impressive action sequences, including one where Frank has to bike through buildings in order to keep up with his car which was just stolen, in the end swinging from a pipe through the buildings window and into his car’s window, thus kicking out the bad guy driving. Like I side, uber-action.
Other than a strange fetish with getting Jason Statham out of his shirt (the man’s abs might be the best in cinema) the film’s fights and action sequences are all solidly edge of your seat affairs involving ridiculous stunts (both real and digital) and escape routes (driving a car onto to wheels so it can squeeze through two moving trucks) that get more and more ridiculous as the film goes on. But much like the directors of these uber-action films, that’s exactly what we want.

What I didn’t expect to get out of Transporter 3 was a decent love story. It’s not going to challenge Romeo and Juliet any time soon, and I would have preferred one less romance scene and one more action sequence, but it was surprisingly nice to have a little bit of emotion behind the exploding cars and fight sequences. Even the relatively uknown Russian actress Natalya Rudakova delivers a performance which starts out aggravating as hell but grows on you as the film goes on.

Statham, who has proven his acting chops in plenty of films outside of his action movies, might be one of the best action heroes to come along since the mid-80’s. The best part is that he can actually fight and make it look good.

Look, Transporter 3 isn’t a great movie and it isn’t trying to be. The best part about uber-action films is that they’re relentlessly unapologetic about what they are. They’re here to deliver action, one-liners, fights and explosions and that is exactly what Transporter 3 does. If you’re looking for that than you’ll love the movie. If you’re not looking for that, well, you've been warned.

Topics: reviews , movies , action