by Holly Huffstutler

Created on: April 29, 2009   Last Updated: August 12, 2009

Frank Martin is surrounded by six evil minions. One of them grabs the lapel of his suit jacket. Frank deliberately looks down at the bad guy's hand, the audience lets out an anticipatory giggle when Frank looks back up at the minion and says with coolly restrained warning "You have five seconds to remove your hand." After two movies, this audience knows what's about to happen. They watch with delight as Frank kicks some unfortunate minion ass in record speed, ending the fight by knocking the last man out and retrieving his jacket from a nearby coat rack in one smooth movement before elegantly throwing the coat over his shoulder and calmly walking out of the room.

"Transporter 3" is the latest in the successful franchise dedicated to the adventures of professional driver, former soldier and all around bad-ass Frank Martin, played by rising British action star Jason Statham. In this movie Frank's mission is to decipher the motives of the group that contracted him with the help of Tarconi, his French detective friend, (Francois Berleand) and protect Valentina: the moody, vodka swilling Ukrainian club kid (Natalya Rudakova) in the car with him, while never moving more than 75 feet from his beloved car or he will blow up.

Like the two that preceded it, it is a movie that runs on adrenaline, testosterone, ridiculously over-the-top fight scenes, car chases, improbable stunts, and the happy certainty that Statham will wind up half naked at several points throughout the film, for one reason or another. If all that sounds appealing to you and you have no problem suspending disbelief when Frank never sustains an injury during any of the many fight scenes, or when he literally flies his car into a moving train, then see this movie and enjoy its excesses, but know that it has its flaws.

Director Olivier Megaton and series creators Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (who also write and produce) have taken a little extra time to get inside Frank's shaved head.

His internal conflict throughout the films has been: do the the right thing or finish the job and walk away unaffected.

His dialogue and emotional disconnection indicate he would prefer to do the latter.

His conscience and series of sexually agressive and culturally stereotyped love interests (Transporter 1: childlike Chinese chatterbox; Transporter 2: rich neglected American wife and now the fatalistic Ukranian) wont let him do that.

This internal conflict is adressed and solved neatly and unconvincingly (Rudakova's less that stellar acting chops shown in the "meaningful" part of the script don't help) in a few lines of dialogue that precede the requisite love scene. Then Frank goes back to killing people

Besson and Kamen have maintained this character and his relationships through three movies and are astute enough to poke fun at the franchise's oft-used tricks in this third installment.

They note the plot device of Frank breaking his own strict rules with this exchange between him and Valentina: "Why have rules if YOU break them?" "I've been asking myself the same question."

They lead into their love scene by referencing Frank's habit of disrobing mid-fight and using his recently shed clothes to kill the bad guys when Valentina comes on to Frank by demanding he repeat the performance.

When he expresses disbelief that watching him beat up five other men would be a turn on; Valentina asks "You think its only men who are turned on by striptease?"

Obviously Besson, Kamen and Megaton know its not, or they wouldn't keep finding excuses to show off the body of their gorgeous star. And thank God.

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