"Transporter 3" -- Movie Review

Due in part to a rash of recent temporal anomalies, but largely to the tawdry lifestyle of The Editor, the following review is well beyond recent... but if you haven't read it, it's new to you! And so, ONWARD!

I haven't decided whether I should recommend “Transporter 3” to you or not. It's a fantastically fun movie to be sure, and yet parts will push you back in your chair and just about roll your eyes for you -- but, oddly enough, the scenes I'm talking about will not be the ones where the filmmakers blatantly, and with unrepentant joy, rape the laws of physics on the screen. The guilty scenes are found in the subplot of blossoming romance between Frank Martin (Jason “Bad Ass” Statham) and his cargo Valentina (Natalya “Making Freckles Ungodly Sexy” Rudakova).

Those scenes press the audience's level of suspension of disbelief, not because of the age difference, but because the dialogue was written by what must have been a hopelessly romantic junior-high-schooler, with such gems as: “No, that's what you're thinking. I'm talking about what you're feeling.”

And yet, when the movie is not concerning itself with blasé emotion or focusing on the sizzling sex appeal of its stars -- as both of them are undeniably pretty people -- it's giving you a healthy dose of impossibly unrealistic action sequences that hark back to the days of “Commando.” It's a fine way to wile away an hour and forty minutes on a Saturday night.

Now, a word about the action sequences: I enjoyed the way the director, the fantastically named Olivier Megaton, used a steady cam for certain action scenes. Sure there are cuts, but they're there only to switch views and done entirely without our old foe The Shaky Cam. Not to mention that he seems to be just as in love with Rudakova as the audience is.

There were times where I couldn't shake the sense, both from Rudakova and Statham, that they could be doing better. They were simply not pushed to do so. That, I blame on the script, co-written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. But since I love Luc Besson, I'll credit him with the the good stuff and blame the other guy for the stuff I didn't like. Is that not professional? Then you're going to hate this next line.

For those of you who might scoff at the non-realism displayed by Frank Martin and his Audi, might I remind you to blow it out your ass? (Told ya.) It's a “Transporter” movie. The previous entry into this series had Statham breaking a dude's back in an underwater fight inside the hull of a recently submerged airplane.

Should any human being ever one-arm a rocket launcher? Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm looking your way. No. Do I need to see Stallone, in a business suit, standing in front of an oncoming bus, almost daring the bus to hit him? No.

But that's the fun of a great bad action movie, and “Transporter 3” is just that. Stuff 'splodes; impossibly sexy girls from Czechoslovakia get themselves into distress; and our hero will sit in his car, all steely eyed, on a bridge with both exits blocked, surrounded by machine-gun-toting henchmen. And yet miraculously, amid the hail of bullets, no one will be hit -- even though the bad guys stand on opposite sides of the hero, unloading ungodly ordinance and their enemy and each other. Trapped, our hero has only one option left to him: he must drive...

And if you need me to finish that sentence, this movie is not for you.

/ 5


Yours Until Hell Freezes Over,
Jeremiah

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"Death Race" -- A Multi-Geek Review

Jeremiah:
“Death Race” isn't a film so much as it is pure, testosterone-fueled insanity. There are races, there's death and more racing, followed by more death, fighting, racing, death again and, oh yeah, plenty of what one might call “jiggly” women. They jiggle... all the time. In fact, I was actually kind of disheartened when I was informed that women really don't exit vehicles like they do in this movie.

It's hard to hate “Death Race” for the simple fact that "Death Race" knows it's "Death Race" and wastes little time in getting things started.

The opening informs us that the movie takes place in the future and that the economy has fallen due to massive inflation, thus causing crime rates to skyrocket. The result being an overcrowded prison system, run by private corporations who concoct ingenious plans for both decreasing the surplus population and lining their pockets with fat stacks of cash. Now, before some of you start to get interested in the possible social commentary, the movie quickly forgets this and focuses on Jason Statham's ethnicity which, for the unfamiliar, is full-blooded badass.

Statham plays Jensen Ames, a former race car driver turned steel mill worker who ends up losing his job when the plant closes down. Later on that night, a masked man breaks into his house, murders his wife and frames the Statham. Before you can say, “Thank goodness it wasn't a one armed man,” he's in prison, where Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) forces him to race. On top of that, they want him to assume the identity of the incredibly popular and recently deceased masked driver, Frankenstein, what with him being the hero to both the prisoners and the population at large, ala, “Rollerball.”

We meet his pit crew, headed up by Coach (Ian McShane) who, while not really doing anything at all, manages to make everyone else look like little girls -- sort of like Samuel L. Jackson in “XXX.” We also meet Frankenstein's co-pilot/navigator, Case (Natalie Martineez). At this point, I would like to applaud the filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson (Please God do NOT confuse him with the brilliant Paul Thomas Anderson, who is also not to be confused by the transcendent Wes Anderson) for filming his exploitative opus on what most assuredly is fire-proof celluloid. I say this because Natalie Martinez is, well... you know... she's hot.

Anyhow, suffice to say there are other racers as well, but the creme de le crème is the track itself, for in order to activate the vehicle guns and defense mechanisms (oil slick, smog, tacks and such) they have to run over these huge buttons in the ground -- a plot point that had me and the other Two Geeks making no end of Mario Kart jokes throughout the film.

See “Death Race,” don't see “Death Race,” ultimately it really makes no difference. It's a high-octane exploitation flick that exploits everything from your emotions, women, cars, violence, cheesy writing and just film in general. I'm fine with that, really. When you walk into a movie with a title like “Death Race” starring someone like Jason Statham you should only be looking for three things: death , racing and Statham kicking someone's ass to a pulp. This movie has all three of those things in mass quantities. It made me giggle.

Am I a better person after this movie? Maybe... but probably not. Yet I'm strangely okay with that.

/ 5

Yours Until Hell Freezes Over,
Jeremiah



Thaddeus:
We need bad movies. And I don't mean bad like "X-Files: I Want to Believe" bad or last year's violently tragic "Dragon Wars" bad, I mean like Schwarzenegger bad. Notoriously, classically and endlessly, entertainingly bad.

The formula should be easily recognizable by now: the future sucks, government corporations control everything and people are placated by prepackaged, live-broadcast murder. "The Running Man" will always be my favorite example of the genre, but there are plenty more: "Rollerball," "Robot Jox" and, of course, "Death Race 2000."

While I hate to admit it, I've never seen the original "Death Race 2000" movie -- even though it combines gladiatorial vehicular homicide with the combined, insurmountable acting prowess of Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine under the dismal backdrop of a futuristic America in the far-off year 2000.

Damn... why haven't I seen that movie?

Anyway, it came as quite a shock when "Death Race" brought a lot more quality to the screen than this particular genre is used to. I mean, c'mon... Jason Statham has, at times, been a real actor (See: "Snatch" -- no jokes, please)... even if his emotional range is somewhat limited by the fact that he always looks kinda angry.

"Death Race" is an excellent use of a tub of popcorn and an hour and a half of your time. What do you want? If you can't appreciate a good, high-speed, action extravaganza... what are you doing at the movies? You must be the kind of people who didn't like "Grindhouse." Don't talk to me.

The plot is, as Sherman previously described, not overly cerebral, but the world is populated by so many cool characters and crazy situations that it hardly matters. The whole "Frankenstein" garage crew is pretty entertaining: particularly Ian McShane as the grizzled Coach and Frederick Koehler as Lists, the nerdy whiz-kid who makes me wonder why he was incarcerated in the first place. Joan Allen's Warden Hennessey is perfectly on-key as the icy, heartless master-villain and I spent the whole movie wanting Hennessey's sadistic lackey/prison guard Ulrich (Jason Clarke) to die horribly... so I guess that means he did his job, right?

The only real problem I had was the utter lack of Stallone and/or Carradine. Catch "Death Race" if you get a chance. It's fun.

3 out of 5

-Thad out

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