Jason Statham turns the crisp white shirt off his ripped back into a lethal weapon during rhythmic fight scenes in the third installment of the “Transporter” action series produced by Luc Besson.
Wearing a Dior suit with spares in the trunk, Statham reprises his role as Frank Martin, a working-class hero developing a panache Bond fans may have missed in Daniel Craig’s 007. He’s a cool, always composed courier who delivers packages — people or goods — for criminals.
As in the first “Transporter,” he establishes his rules — no names, never change the deal, never look in the package — only to break them.
Possibly in response to criticism over “T2’s” laborious plot, “T3” has none. Not even the founder of Greenpeace would care about the toxic waste at the center of the conflict. The international cast spends only a few lines of garbled English on the bad guy’s scheme to blackmail the head of the Ukraine’s environmental protection agency to harbor the sludge, kept in the meantime on ships at sea.
Before Martin can knock out pipe-welding punishers — each of course waiting patiently for his turn — Martin is attached to his shiny, black Audi like never before. The convincing villain Robert Knepper (“Prison Break’s” Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell) ties the transporter and his kidnapped human cargo to the car with chrome bracelets that will blow them to smithereens if they get farther than 75 feet from the car.
The remainder of the movie is a high-octane road trip the graveled-voiced Knepper forces Martin to drive without knowing the ever-changing destination.
Valentina, his redheaded Ukrainian passenger portrayed by Natalya Rudakova, who director Olivier Megaton discovered on the streets of New York, is sleeping, sullen, sexy and then sappy, in that order.
On a pit stop when she’s hungry, she grabs a bottle of vodka rather than a sandwich and pops two pills left over in her purse from the night before. An outdoor love scene ensues following an intense car chase on a forest road, where Martin lifts the Audi off the ground onto two wheels to squeeze between parallel 18-wheelers.
Megaton devotes plenty of time to bloodless martial arts spars and creative car maneuvers, but never in excess for “Transporter” fans.
One especially MacGyver-like plan to keep the action star from drowning with his car shows the scriptwriters thought enough to craft an intelligence in Martin. Too bad they didn’t spend the same amount of time on the plot. That said, the nonsense steered by Statham is exhilarating. You’ll enjoy it if you check your brain at the popcorn stand.
THE FACTS
‘Transporter 3’
Four out of five stars
Stars: Jason Statham, Natalya Rudakova and Robert Knepper
Director: Olivier Megaton
Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, some sexual content and drug material
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
