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In attempting to explain my infatuation with these films, I must first start with Jason Statham. Perhaps you know Statham already. 2008 has borne out that Mr. Statham apparently never sleeps, he just appears in one B-movie after another (five this year alone!), so I'm going to go ahead and assume that we're all familiar with him. Jason Statham, best I can tell, is not just the finest action hero of our times - he's a bit of a throwback in that his persona doesn't quite mesh with the action heroes of the last twenty-five years.
He doesn't give off the same untouchable ubermensch vibe as a Schwarzenegger or a Stallone or a Norris; the closest modern analogue I can think of is Bruce Willis, but even then Willis's appeal is predicated almost entirely on a sly-humored, accessible Everyman quality that seems to elude Statham. Statham's charm is straight-faced, no-bullshit and toughly utilitarian. He understands that the best way to deal with an obstacle is right through it. To get that base appeal, we have to wander on back to the '70s, back to the grindhouse, to the last gasp of the unfrilled action auteurs and the meat-and-potatoes asskicker actors. To put it simply, Statham would have been solid next to Marvin, Eastwood and Bronson working under guys like Don Siegel or Robert Aldrich or Walter Hill. If he toils in second-tier genre cinema, it's only because that's what he's made to do, and the Transporter series is his Dirty Harry.
So there's that. But then, I don't view Death Race or Crank with the same cockeyed affection that I do this film. The difference is in tone, and that difference comes from the origin of the films. Many of Statham's American works are typical of the current trend in our action cinema - they're loud, brash, aggressive, flashy and utterly devoid of soul, massive expensive noisemakers full of fire and noise that substitute anger and meanness for relatability. The Transporter films, on the other hand, are products of Luc Besson's Europa production company. While Europa's record isn't spotless (it's Besson's fault that we have Xavier Gens), there's a cheerful inclusiveness to the majority of their product, a certain guilelessness that seems miles away from the force-fed thuggish pummeling of something like Crank. With the Transporter series, at this point the flagship of the Europa empire, the prevailing attitude is, "Hey, you want entertainment? We got it. Oh, we know it's silly. You might have to leave your credibility at home. But come on, it's fun. You don't like it? Oh, well, we tried. We like it, at least."
This is especially true of Transporter 3, in which everyone involved appears to have stopped giving a damn about whether or not their film is perceived as badass and decided to shade just this side of comedy. The sheer nuttiness of the action sequences bear this out. The very premise - Statham essentially shackled to his car, unable to leave it lest a bracelet on his wrist explode and turn him into vapor - limits the variety of action available to even the most intrepid of filmmakers, thus ruling out a hand-to-hand brawl as memorable as the oil-slick fight from the original Transporter or the firehose gambit from the followup; while a garage fight involving pipes and a shovel is included mainly as a sop, Megaton and the screenwriters are more interested in exhausting pretty much anything you can do with a car and a couple things you really can't. To check off all the wonderful, exasperating, stupid and amusing things that the filmmakers give us would be an article in itself and defeat the purpose besides, but of special note is a return to the '80s car-driving-on-two-wheels cliche but extended so far past the limits of reasonable doubt that it achieves its own sort of giddy fuck-off poetry.
But wait, there's more: It's not just the action sequences that are cracked. The downtime where people talk and sweat and plan is pretty loony as well. A good portion of the film is given over to the odd-couple relationship between Statham's business-minded driver Frank Martin and his human cargo Valentina, a freckly Ukrainian waif-sprite played by Natalya Rudakova; the latter compensates for her minimal acting talent by generally appearing and acting as supercute as a human being can appear and act, bouncing, smoldering, whimpering and spewing out malapropisms like, "You are the gay?" and, "I just want to feel the sex one more time." There's also the invaluable Francois Berleand, the man who wants us all to forget that Phillipe Noiret ever died, returning as the wry Inspector Tarconi, and the scene where a info-sharing scene between him and Statham segues into him bitching about the dour nature of Russian people and the impenetrability of Dostoevsky is some kind of genius.
But here it is, everything you need to know about Transporter 3: This action-oriented, slam-bang thrill machine opens with its snarling brawler hero sitting with Berleand in a boat fishing. Not just fishing either, but impishly playing a prank on Berleand after the Frenchman dozes off. Transporter 3 may not be a good movie overall, but it's a breezy and enjoyably farcical B-movie, a cheap-n-cheesy amalgam of world sensibilities that means no harm and aspires to be nothing other than an admirable waste of time. You can't say that about that shitpile Wanted.
- Steve Carlson (0 comments)