Review of Transporter 3 (2008) by Donm. — 16 Dec 2008

Watching this movie in a theatre was one of the few times I've experienced the urge to get up and leave half an hour into the feature. I wasn't alone on this; a few people in the theatre actually left, and the friend of mine who came with me had leaned over and said "hey man, we should just go and play Forza or something".

I'm as big a Jason Statham fan as the next guy, but this was just plain BAD. A reviewer had said the plot was "needlessly complicated?" That's insane. If anything, some complexity could have turned this movie from bargain bin to 2/$25.

The 'villian', who was somewhat overacted by Robert Knepper, wasn't clever. At all. This should be a crime. The 'love interest', who was incredibly and sulkily underacted by Natalya Rudakova, wasn't even cleverly vapid, but just plain stupid.

The entire time I was watching the "sexually tense" interactions between Statham and Rudakova, I felt like I was watching a thirteen year old hit on her dad. On top of that, her character's shallowness was only overshadowed by how poorly the role was acted.

(She also suffers from a strange condition in which she's not overly attractive until she puts on her "i want to S your D" face.) It would have also been in the best interests of the writers to not attempt to invent a new James Bond.

Frank Martin's line of work and personality are apt for him to, ironically, never have a real personality. The role works as a steeped-in-mystery-with-no-personal-details affair, but he shows too much weakness all of a sudden for this movie to work well.

It was such a boring, contrived shell of what could have been something somewhat compelling, even if it IS 'just an action movie'. As the ending drew near and the plot became more and more transparent and predictable, I still rolled my eyes at the "saved by inflating a dufflebag with tire air underwater" and "jump an Audi S6 onto the roof of a moving traincar.

" I gave it a 1/10 simply because even though the Tarconi character was as badly scripted as the rest, François Berléand is still funny by default (except the line "Russians.. they're always so dark.

"This made me want to destroy the one person in the theatre who laughed at it).