Saturday, February 7, 2009

The Transporter 3

I liked the first Transporter movie. The second one was almost like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Within the first few minutes I realized I would have to suspend my sense of reality and turn off my "that's totally fake" meter if I was going to enjoy the movie. I had to accept the fact that wooden doors can shield you against close range machine guns, and if a speeding jet crashes into the ocean you will only get wet. Once I made these adjustments I was able to enjoy it as a fun and mindless action movie. The third movie continued with this same trend as the second.

I was anticipating a movie full of totally fake stunts and I was right. Even Stratham's car window healed itself after he did a flying dragon jump through the glass and kicks a bad guy out the other side of the car. I'm not going to pick apart all the goofs in this movie, I understand it is stylized and has Luc Beeson written all over it so I will stop criticizing the fakeness of it now and move onto different criticisms.

I like Jason Stratham, but is he trying to overtake Matthew McConaughey's coveted position as king of the shirtless scenes? There were four or five scenes where he took his shirt off in the movie. Oh that's right, he has to out of necessity, because he uses his shirt as a weapon when he fights. My bad. Another pattern I've noticed is that he keeps getting put with unknown female leads or newcomers in these movies. The Ukranian chick in this movie played by Natalya Rudakova bugged me. There are plenty of beautiful women in the world to choose from, so why was she picked? She reminded me of Jar Jar Binks each time she'd open her mouth. I was seriously just waiting for her to say "Meessa luva you" at some point.

This movie has an exciting premise and I enjoyed the action, but I missed the humor of the prior movies. I only give it 5.9 out of 10 stars since it was the weakest of the three in the series. If you are a woman you can go ahead and take 2 more points off that rating. That being said, if The Transporter 4 ever comes out I will gladly go see it at the dollar theater with the guys.

2 comments:

Emily said...

Don't YOU use your shirt as a weapon? I totally do. All the time.
I also have to suppress my "that's so fake" meter quite often. But it's usually in something like an animated feature or something about aliens, which isn't even pretending to be realistic in its basic premise. So I can't say, "Yeah, right" too loud or else I get funny looks.
And I want to just point out that I've never seen you rate any movie anything other than 5 or 6. I get that you like to be tough on movies, but have you seriously never seen a 1 or 2? I want to know.

Tom said...

Rent "Manos, Hands of Fate" I saw it on Mystery Science Theater and even with the comedy and heckling in the back ground it was by far the worst movie I have ever seen. I give it 0 out of 10.