DVD Features Jason Statham Again as Daredevil Driver
Transporter 3 unfolds like a variation of Speed, establishing an urgent motif which keeps you on edge for the duration of the high-octane adventure. At the point of departure, we find Frank Martin (Jason Statham), chauffeur nonpareil, being “hired” at gunpoint by mobsters to drive a secret package to an undisclosed location. The catch is that to insure his allegiance the thugs have strapped a bomb to his body which is set to detonate if he wanders more than 75 feet from the vehicle.
Another complication is that Frank has a raccoon-eyed passenger coming along for the ride, Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), a pill-popping, vodka-swigging party girl he saved from the same goons. What our hero doesn’t know is that the freckle-faced femme fatale just happens to be the kidnapped daughter of Leonid Vasilev (Jeroen Krabbe), a powerful Ukrainian politician presently being pressured to sign a government contract as ransom by the creep (Robert Knepper) who attached the explosives to his arm.
Fair warning, the storyline won’t hold up well to close scrutiny, as the point of the picture is the incessant visual capture provided by all the pyrotechnics and gravity-defying stunt sequences featuring carefully-orchestrated gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, and car, bike and train chases. Is the plot plausible? No, but it hurtles along at such a breakneck pace you don’t have a chance to pause to contemplate its preposterousness.
From Frank’s successfully running a gauntlet of bloodthirsty foes, to driving his souped-up sports car off an overpass and landing safely onto a speeding locomotive, to tipping the auto onto its side to negotiate a narrow passageway between a couple of 18-wheelers, this is an overindulgence in pure escapist fantasy. Mix in a little charm and romance, and you have all the fixins for the most dashing and debonair British character around, including James Bond.
Very good (3 stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence, intense action, sexuality and drug use.
Running time: 100 minutes
Studio: Lionsgate Home Entertainment
2-Disc DVD Extras: Behind the scenes bonus footage, digital copy of the film, director’s audio commentary, “The Making of” featurette, and a theatrical trailer.
To see a trailer for Transporter 3,
