Sunday, Nov. 30, 2008

'Transporter 3' does action well, not dialogue

By Edward Robertson, atomictown.com

Four reasons we should all quit our day jobs and immediately become delivery boys/girls: Snow Crash, Han Solo, Fry from Futurama, and the Transporter movies.

I don't know how this new all-delivery economy is going to work -- maybe we can all bring each other lunch; running stuff all over the place has got to build an appetite -- but come on, we've got to try something nationally, and I don't think our stepped-up bindle production is going to solve things by itself. Recycling that pile of Thunderbird bottles under our beds isn't going to cut it, either.

Wait, I've got it! We just constantly deliver each other large sacks of cash (dollar sign on the side optional). Then it's on to a cushy life of playing the cops for chumps and insulting princesses until they make out with us. I don't know what it is about delivering goods that's so glamorous and exciting, but it probably has something to do with the spaceships, samurai sword, and mostly the crime. In Jason Statham's case in Transporter 3, I'd guess it's the fast cars and brick-like muscles, but what can I say, I'm shallow.

Statham is retired from the world of high-stakes package delivery, but when you're that good, the work comes looking for you. This time, it arrives in the form of Robert Knepper, who kidnaps Statham and pressgangs him back into action with a bracelet that will explode if Statham gets more than 75 feet from his car.

His cargo: two fat duffel bags and Natalya Rudakova, a party girl who's along for the ride. As Knepper attempts to extort a shipload of toxic waste into Eastern Europe, Statham races across the continent, following Knepper's orders even as he seeks to escape the death warrant wrapped around his wrist.

Transporter 3 is first and foremost a fight-and-car-chase delivery system. Wisely, it keeps those front and center, regularly serving up the clobbery goods as little things such as plot and character take a back seat (hey, that is a car joke).

Not to suggest the franchise has ever been a beacon of verisimilitude, but the action here is especially over the top (i.e. awesome), ranging from Statham's impressive stripper fu -- judging from the number of dress shirts torn off and wielded as weapons, Transporter 3 is deep in the pockets of the dry cleaning industry -- to car stunts that are somewhere between brightly inventive and laughably impossible. As my friend and fellow Transporter aficionado put it, Jason Statham doesn't bend the laws of physics, the laws of physics bend to him.

Too bad that same energy doesn't carry over into writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen's dialogue. Action movie dialogue has always existed in its own questionable world, a realm where puns about some guy dying are seen as comical rather than sociopathic and chicks are magically enraptured by dudes who express no personality at all. Ever try that in real life? There's a reason guys such as Statham have so many enemies; it's because they're effing rude.

The dialogue bar, then, is already pretty low. But when you have actual villains running around blackmailing governments and heroes crashing cars through trains, why not make what your characters are saying equally crazy instead of safe, terse actiony banter? Transporter 3's writing isn't particularly bad, it just feels like a wasted opportunity.

At least the story, slight as it is, clips right along. Maybe director Olivier Megaton, whose name pretty much guaranteed he'd end up in a fireball-oriented career, is on to something by keeping his movie straightforward and surprise-free; at least that way he's in no danger of getting in the way of his laundry-centric fight choreography.

That's about all Transporter 3 has to offer, which may sound like faint praise unless you belong to the not-so-exclusive club of those of us who'd punch our own brother in the face for a good scene of some guy punching other guys in the face.

Transporter 3 is certainly nothing new, but it's enthusiastic enough to be welcome anyway.

Grade: C+