Transporter 3 Blu-ray review

Transporter 3 is definitely the best comedy on Blu-Ray right now.  That would be high praise if this wasn’t an action movie of course.  Here’s the plot for you:  Frank Martin (Jason Statham doing what he does best – emoting very little and rocking a five o’clock shadow) is a transporter.  He transport things.  This is apparently a lucrative business.  Unlike FedEx and UPS – Frank uses an Audi sports car.  He’s a no questions asks professional who just gets the job done.  Frank, however, has a problem.  He seems to always get stuck transporting women.  Frank is essentially a totally awesome taxi driver who can kick the shit out of 10 people at once (while getting undressed for the ladies).  This time around Frank is stuck transporting a skanky acid dropping party girl by the name of Valentina.  Luc Besson and his writing partner didn’t care to give her a last name so I will.  Valentina Cantactworthshit.

You see, Miss Cantactworthshit is the daughter of a Ukrainian politician who deals in complaining, nice suits, and the environment.  Some goons from a very unexplained company  are trying to force him into giving them the permission to dump toxic waste into the ocean.  They could just save time and dump it out in international waters where no one would notice, but then we wouldn’t have this gem of celluloid now would we?  Anyway, in order to do this they kidnap his daughter while she is getting jiggy with it on the dance floor.  Anyway, Valentina and Frank end up with cheap looking bracelets that tether them to the car.  If they go more than 75 feet from the vehicle – it’s KABOOM time.  This seems to not bother Valentina one bit.  In fact, she seems perfectly fine with all the guns and explosions and death.  Frank basically drives her around Europe encountering one implausible event after another. To say more would be a waste of time – because really this entire movie is a waste of time.  I’ll get right down to it in a list of complete and stupid absurdities this movie hurls at the viewer in rapid succession:

– A car crashes into Frank’s house and he doesn’t flinch or really seem concerned at all.  His expression was basically “I’ll worry about this after I make a sandwich.”

– EMT’s rescue the man from the car and somehow manage to not notice A WOMAN SLEEPING IN THE BACK SEAT!  Furthermore, she slept through the crash.  That’s pretty impressive in it’s own right.

– The two Frank vs hired goons action scenes are almost identical to one another.  Frank just loses more clothes in the second one.

– Watching Frank fight for his life, kill people, and lose his clothes in the process turns on Valentina.  She goes from hating him to wanting to bone him over the course of 1 minute.

– Frank’s mysterious friend who works in the middle of nowhere inexplicably knows exactly how the top secret bomb device works thanks to the internet.  He can’t fix it though because it’s “wired to the car.”  No shit Sherlock!  How else would it work!?

– Frank can chase down an Audi sports car on a bike while riding it through houses and down hand rails and fuck may as well go right up a wall too.  There’s no credibility left at this point.

– At the end of the bike chase Frank smashes through the driver side car window and ejects the driver out of the passenger door.  The glass does not cut him, he lands PERFECTLY in the seat somehow, and within seconds the glass magically repairs itself.  Furthermore, the interior of the car has no glass in it at all for the rest of the film.

– Valentina can describe foods with very good English then turns around an asks Frank “What is (insert common English word here)?”  Also, this girl must eat out a lot because she knows about a good restaurant in EVERY town they mention in the movie.  Her and Frank’s entire relationship is based on food.

– Valentina seduces Frank while high on drugs leading to Frank doing a strip tease.  This goes down after a tense chase where they both almost died multiple times.  Oh  yes, Frank is easily old enough to be her dad.

– Through the magic of movie making Frank somehow hooks a cell phone up to a laptop, calls the main bad guy, and this allows his French inspector friend to trace the call.

– When Frank has to drive his car into a river to avoid death – he produces floating devices from his trunk and fills them with air from his tires.  TWO of them are able to life his 2 ton car out of the water.  I assume Yoda was on shore giving him a helping hand. Oh and a local with a tractor shows up to tow his car to dry land.  What great timing!

– After the above happens – Frank is able to START THE CAR with some minor tinkering and give chase on what should be FLAT TIRES!  However, they are magically perfectly fine and full of air!

– The final confrontation involves Frank driving his car into a train so he could fight and be close to the car.  Frank eventually overcomes the fairly feeble bad buy and finally is able to detach his explosive bracelet.  He then attaches it to the bad guy and somewhat ties his hand to the steering wheel of the car with the seatbelt.  He then throws the car into reverse.  Frank watches as the bad guy frees himself.  He then looks COMPLETELY SURPRISED as he lunges for cover when the bad guy explodes because the train and car are moving in opposite directions.  Way to almost get yourself killed dumbass!  Why didn’t you put him IN THE CAR FIRST! You obviously knew if he got free he’d blow up in the train and take you with him!

– Unless the train seats block explosions.  Which the one Frank hides behind apparently does..

To make matters even worse, the movie is edited like a music video.  The fight scenes speed up for now reason and include so many edits it would make Michael Bay squeal with glee.  They totally ruin any of the mediocre fight choreograhy that Cory Yuen put together for the film.  All the car chases are undercranked as well.  Which means they took cars going the speed limit and cut frames out of the film to make them appear to be screaming down the road.  You basically get Benny Hill style car chases.  This film was directed very poorly by Olivier MEGATON.  Yes in the credits his last name is in all caps.

On the plus side the video quality was very solid.  Sharp detail, landscape shots looked great, and so did the cars.  Also, at 1080p you can count every one of the million freckles on Valentina Cantactworthshit’s face. Audio is also handled quite well.

The Transporter series started off as a fun, mostly brainless, and well directed action movie.  Sadly, with each film the series becomes more and more shallow.  Jason Statham is the only reason to watch these movies.  He is a very capable fighter and actor.  With Transporter 3 you get to see very little of his talents due to the spazztastic editing and sloppy directing.  Jason deserves better.  It’s pretty pathetic when In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (made by movie master Uwe Boll) has action scenes that are filmed 10000 times better than this turd.

1/10 and I’m being generous.