Transporter 3

I usually avoid watching sequels of any movies. I have been severly disappointed (and my patience sorely tested!) by sequels of movies such as Men in Black, Jurassic Park and The Mummy. The only exception was Ocean’s Eleven – just loved both its sequels. :-)

But the other day it occurred to me that the last movie I watched - “Journey to the center of the earth” - was many moons ago. I browsed through the newspapers and chose “Transporter 3”. I figured even if I didn’t get the story there would at least be some edge-of-the-seat action sequences. Oh, BTW I don’t even remember whether I watched Transporter 1 or 2 – let alone recall their storylines.

I missed first few moments of the movie but the story that I pieced together lateron is like this. Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is “forced” to accept an assignment of delivering “a package” from Marseilles to Odessa on the Black Sea. As a rule, Frank usually works alone on a mission but this time, though he is allowed to use his beloved Audi, he has to put up with a female co-passenger Valentina (Natalya Rudakova). Somewhere connected to this trip is a shipful of toxic waste that a company wants to dump in Ukraine.

First for the pluses! They begin and end with the fantastic action sequences. Be it the car chases or Frank’s fighting a bunch of thugs trying to intercept his delivery – I was never disappointed.

What disappointed me most was that the movie at times reminded me too painfully of a Hindi movie। During his fight with about 8-10 people in his friend’s garage Frank keeps shedding his clothes faster than that of a model with a “wardrobe malfunction”. The name “Salman Khan” popped into my mind. :-) Statham has a good body but couldn’t they think of any other ways of showing it off without making it look as if he is doing a striptease as he goes about bashing up the baddies?

Then his co-passenger (freckles, freckles everywhere!) tries every trick in the book to seduce him। I gasped when she dangles the car key in front of him teasing him that she won’t return it unless he kisses her first. This was so similar (barring the kissing part, of course) to scenes in lot of Hindi movies that I was worried that they might break into a song any minute now. What, oh what was the need of throwing in this romantic twist in what should have been an out-and-out action movie? :-(

Granted, the lady is from Ukraine but the accent was so jarring and heavy that at times I stopped trying to figure out what she is saying. And the bad guy with his malnourished looks seemed as if he could do with a plate of sausages and other assorted gourmet dishes that Valentina rattles off in surprisingly precise English :-) But the Audi looks so sleek that I was worried about its safety more than that of Frank’s or Valentina’s.

I hope and pray that if they ever decide to come out with Transporter 4, they will stick to the good ol’ action movie formula!