Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
11/30/08
As Jean-Claude Van Damme
steps back to regard the wreckage of his career in JCVD,
we are reminded of a cold, hard fact that confronts every action star.
No matter how good you are, most action movies are bad, and eventually
they will take you down with them. But, man, how I want Jason Statham
to rise above that cold equation. The English-born martial arts star
who burst onto the scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
is the real deal, supercool, physically gifted and a charismatic leading
man. But the more crappy action movies a man does, the harder it
is to escape the genre, and the diminishing returns are written all over
Transporter
3, his latest go-round as Frank Martin, the snappy dresser who drives
really fast. He's as cool as ever, the stunts are solid and he's
got a crackerjack adversary in Prison Break's Robert Knepper.
But the screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen is an insult to
idiocy and the passenger's seat in Frank's beloved Audi is occupied by
one of the worst movie characters in many a year. He'd better push
that accelerator to the floor, because Frank Martin's franchise is circling
the drain.
Poor Frank, a quiet evening
at home is interrupted by a car that comes crashing through his wall.
It's driven by Malcolm (David Atrakchi), a young driver he recommended
to some thugs who wanted to hire him for a shady job (he, of course, had
to beat the crap out of them, even his flashbacks are violent). Dazed
and only semi-coherent (and really needing to move the plot forward) Malcolm
can't quite articulate the problem with the steel bracelet around his wrist,
and Frank has him loaded into an ambulance that drives away and explodes
when it gets 75 feet away from the car in his living room. There's
a woman in the back seat, Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), and The Transporter
gets to know her a lot better once he's knocked out and awakens with a
bracelet of his own. The mysterious Mr. Johnson (Robert Knepper)
informs him that the job is now his to finish, and the bracelets assure
that if he or Valentina abandons the car he's supposed to drive across
Europe... BOOM! So the adventure begins, lots of driving, lots of
fighting, all of it having to do with a plot to blackmail European Union
environmental official Leonid Vasilev (Jeroen Krabbe) into allowing the
Worst. Toxic Waste. Ever. to be dumped within the EU's waters.
First, the good news:
Olivier Megaton (the second unit director on last year's Thanksgiving action
turkey Hitman) knows how to stage an action sequence.
The incorporation of Frank's trademark suit into his fighting style is
always a hit, and he takes out the usual armies of adversaries with the
usual flair, including a showstopping fight with an utterly gigantic thug
(UFC fighter Semmy Schilt). The vehicular stunts are great too, including
a high speed chase that ends on two wheels and a wonderful sequence where
Frank is separated from the car and must race it on foot and a bike to
stay within 75 feet. And the movie is able to coast for a while on
its' star's charisma: Statham is so cool he can make even the clunkiest
lines (“I'd like to offer you a position, too: permanently disabled.”)
sound clever. And even though his character is a bit of a washout,
Knepper oozes menace and skillfully stands toe to toe with our hero.
But the screenplay is a disaster,
hinging on the ridiculous notion that the evildoers at EnviroCorp can pretty
much destroy the world unchallenged if a single government official signs
a single piece of paper under duress. Given the fact that everything
they hope to accomplish can be undone the moment Vasilev breathes a word
about their scheme, it's just a whole lot of sound and fury signifying
less than nothing. I'd imagine that anyone reading this could supply
a dozen better Macguffinous reasons why Valentina must be in that car off
the top of their head. And then there's the torturous notion of Frank's
“Rules”: yes, the original Transporter was about a ruthless
deliveryman who asks no questions and is reluctantly forced to care about
someone affected by his work. Now that it's happened three times
over, The Transporter seems to just wish people would shut up about his
Rules, but no one will. The other characters keep parroting them
to him again and again leading to variations on exchanges like
Character #1: What
good are Rules if you just break them?
Frank: I'm beginning
to wonder that myself.
Character #2: They're
your Rules.
Frank: Maybe we can
break them just this once.
Listen up, movie, Frank's
as over his Rules as I am! And other than offering the movie a snappy-sounding
High Concept, what's the deal with those bracelets? Since Johnson
doesn't control the car in any way, what's to stop the heroes from simply
driving where he doesn't want them to go? If allowing him to put
GPS in the car and track their movements is its' sole goal, why not just
put GPS in the bracelets and avoid risking the untimely detonation of the
woman who's the point of his entire exercise? Anyone?
But all logical lapses pale
before the horror of Valentina. Initially, Frank's passenger seems
to be nothing more than a grumpy stowaway, but he makes the mistake of
drawing her out. Turns out, in addition to her relationship to Vasilev,
she possesses a dazzling array of unlikable character traits, starting
with the fact that she's a total skank. Allow me to define the term:
a young woman who parties hard, knows what she wants, etc. etc. isn't a
skank until she's placed in mortal danger and, rather than wanting to aid
in her own rescue, instead spends the entire adventure forcing herself
on the hero, taking drugs and peeing on convenience store floors.
Call me a prude, call me a fuddy-duddy, but when a movie character makes
a big, sexy show of urinating in public, I consider that a turn-off.
Add that the movie never does specify if bathroom tissue was among the
items she helped herself to in that store, and I found it really difficult
thereafter to go back to thinking of her as a sex object.
Ah, but if only being a skank
and a druggie were her only faults. Besson and Kamen write the role
as if Valentina doesn't know much English, pulling out those old conversation
starting chestnuts “What does it mean...?” and “How do you say...?” more
than any self-respecting 2008 release ever should even though her loving
father has a perfect command of the language. Practically everything
that comes out of her mouth is either idiotic (her passionate defense of
how Ukranians are different from Russians by pointing to her head and her
heart) or banal (a device where she and Frank discuss the meals they'd
really like to be having at that moment is about as romantic as a kick
in the groin). Debuting former hairdresser Natalya Rudakova doesn't
make a very good impression, but the role is beyond awful, and would likely
defeat Meryl Streep herself (although that's a pretty funny image...).
Memo to Luc Besson: the next time you “discover” a young hairdresser
and ask her to read for a role in one of your movies where she seductively
pees on the floor, you might want to keep that story to yourself...
Strangely enough, Transporter
3 is pretty much always going either really well or absolutely horribly,
mostly depending upon whether Statham is on-screen or not and whether he's
got Rudakova with him at the time. While it's a better movie (faint
praise), it shares many of the faults Megaton was contributing to while
he was shooting establishing shots of “London, England” for Hitman.
Which also paired a bald anti-hero with a Eurotrash femme fatale, featured
Knepper as the villain and came out this same weekend a year ago.
Wonder if he ever feels like entering a room and booming out “I... am...
MEGATON!!!”? I know I would. And this is what Jason Statham's
career has come to... |
