Back when the television show 24 began its run we all learned a very important lesson. No, not that Kiefer Sutherland was nigh indestructible. What we learned was that good guys do their computing on Macs and bad guys use PCs. Of course, this is not something that truly applies to the real world, but in the heightened world of international intrigue and terrorist plots, it can be more important than having a gun with a full clip.
The world created in the Transporter series teaches us something else. Good guys drive Audis and bad guys tend towards Mercedes. Well, this is at least true in the latest edition of the series (good guys drove BMWs in the first film, and in a pinch anything will do).
It has been two years since the last time we saw Frank Martin (Jason Statham) completing a mission in his adopted home of Miami, thus keeping his 100% delivery rate perfect. The end of that movie found Martin saving the day, escaping certain death, and ensuring that his friend, French Inspector Tarconi (François Berléand), catches his flight back to France. That was then and this is now. Martin is back in his Marseilles home and he is certainly not chauffeuring kids to and from school (which can be quite dangerous); rather he spends his time fishing with Tarconi. Unfortunately, his non-transporting bliss is to be short-lived.
Transporter 3 plays out something like a dumbed down James Bond adventure. What the film lacks in gadgetry (well, Bond seems to lack a little in this area as well) it more than makes up for in car chases, gun fights, babes (just one, but I find her to be enough), and of course a villain with a dastardly plot. Frank Martin sits in for Bond and is put in a position of having to be reactionary based on the ever-evolving situation that develops around him.
The bad guy is Johnson (Robert Knepper), and he is plotting to force the president of Ukraine's EPA to sign an agreement that would allow for the dumping of toxic waste in the port of Odessa. Of course, he does not want to allow this to happen, but Johnson has his daughter and therefore the upper hand in the underhanded negotiations. That is about as deep as the plot goes, existing to merely give at least a little bit of heft to the 90-minute chase sequence. It works, for the most part.
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