Transporter 3

(Oliver Megaton):

Jason Statham, Natalya Rudakova, François Berléand, Robert Knepper.

Running time: 100 minutes. (15A)

Rating: 3/5

The director of Transporter 3 is a Frenchman called Olivier Megaton. With a name like that, he seems ideal to direct this thermonuclear blast of mindless macho mayhem. Transporter 3 is ludicrously silly and unintentionally funny. It's also an edge-of-the-seat guilty pleasure. It is the Bond movie we should have had this summer. Jason Statham reprises the role of Frank Martin, the impeccably suited 'transporter' who always delivers. He likes his black high-powered saloon car so much that, this time, he has been given a bracelet that will explode if he moves 75 feet from the vehicle. Frank has been coerced into driving party brat Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), the kidnapped daughter of a Ukrainian politician, through eastern Europe to Odessa. He drives his car on two wheels in between trucks. He lands it on a train. He drives it through a carriage and under a lake. Along the way, the film does everything possible to drag him away from his beloved motor. It is tightly-engineered car porn set to thumping techno with beefy martial arts sequences. And Statham is ideal because he doesn't strain to be serious or smirk at the material to be aloof.