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Transporter 3: 2-Disc Fully Loaded Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Lions Gate Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (22nd April 2009). |
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The Film
 The "Transporter" series (2002-2008) are about the most ridiculous action movies I've ever seen, they are cheesy, feature inane dialogue, brainless villains, equally brainless hot girls and big dumb action. It's not exactly high art, it's explosions and big bangs for the masses and for the most part it works. The film's are so stupid to the point that they are immensely entertaining mostly because of Jason Statham and those crazy chase sequences... plus the underlying gayness of the character Frank Martin is pretty funny too... but even that is squashed in this film with the character proclaiming that he is "not the gay!" in a laughable scene in which his latest female "package" wants to get dirty with our hero. "Transporter 3" is probably the weakest of the films in this series (is there even a strong film in this series?) and although there's a lot to hate about it, at least the filmmakers are self-aware as to what it is they are submitting to viewers: Dumb action. Frank Martin (Jason Statham) returns as the professional "Transporter" this time under duress, he is forced to deliver a package by Johnson (Robert Knepper), which turns out to be a red headed woman, Valentina (Natalya Rudakova). She is the daughter of Leonid Vasilev (Jeroen Krabbé), a Russian politician. Valentina has been kidnapped and Frank must deliver her to Odessa. In order to keep tabs on Frank and his package, an explosive device is attached to their wrists, if they go past 75 feet from the car they will explode. To complicate matters further the people who coerced him into taking the job don't trust him and he's also pursued by rouge guns for hire, the Ukraine government and must also deal with his uncontrollable passenger. "Transporter 3" doesn't pretend to be anything it's not, it knows full well that it's a big and bloated action roller coaster that's sole purpose is to entertain. However this third film in the series is much more annoying than its previous installments. To being with, the girl in this third go around, Natalya Rudakova was just plain unbearable. Co-writer/producer Luc Besson found her in New York one day, she had no acting experience and despite her going to 'acting school' to prepare for the role she still can't carry a scene let alone a line of dialogue. Her performance is wooden, uninteresting, unmemorable and she's undoubtedly the weakest of the all the female characters of this series. Would it kill the producers to have hired someone that could actually act likable? To make matters worse the fight scenes this time around were really infuriating to watch, the scenes features so many cuts it literally will give you a headache, plus it's hard to even keep up with what's happening. The fast-pace of the cutting may be the flavor of the month at the moment with many action films speeding it up but I hope this fad dies out soon. The scenes were so disorientating that if I didn't have to review the film I wold have either switched the film off or fast forward through those scenes. This of course leads us to the most offensive element of this film, it's script. The plot is seriously flawed. The reasons behind Frank's services are contrived and ill plotted. The kidnapping-to-force-someone's-hand story line is tired and predicable, in saying that the series' strengths never rested on the plot. In fact the thinner the better, all they need is a reason to go from A to B and reasons to throw in some action and fight scenes and voila... you have a "Transporter" movie. Logic and common sense rarely enter the picture. You can't really expect much from "Transporter 3" and what you expect: action, fight scenes, car chases and girls are delivered fairly consistently. "Transporter 3" isn't all that bad, the film's star, Jason Statham is pretty likable as Frank Martin. He's fun to watch and plays the role with gusto and no shame, exactly the way it should be played. He seems to be having fun and that translates onto the screen most of the time. While the fight scenes were headache inducing I was more amped by the car chases. All the car stunts were performed for real by the stunt team, director Olivier Megaton wanted little to no CGI trickery and thus the scenes are exiting and most importantly don't look fake. The car chases are what make this film mostly enjoyable... and with a brainless film such as this, I'll take just about anything to not have to listen to Natalya Rudakova speak.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 in high-definition 1080p 24/fps and mastered using AVC MPEG-4 compression, this image can be expected to deliver some serious eye candy. The ultra sharp image looks incredible in HD, the detail right down to facial textures is astoundingly good showing off the photography and lighting. The rich depth of the image is immediately evident from its opening scenes of Frank and Inspector Tarconi fishing. The image is clear and free from any flaws, there was no dirt, specks or compression related problems. Lionsgate gave this film a 50GB disc to breath on and the result is impressive. I was also impressed with color saturation, the colors were striking and bold, black levels deep and bold and skin tones accurate and natural. This is a reference quality image if I ever saw one and can be added to the pile of already increasing impressive HD transfers to use in order to show off your set-up.
Audio
Two audio tracks are presented here in English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround mixed at 48kHz/24-bit as well as a French Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track. For the purposes of the review I chose to view the film with its DTS-HD audio track, and much like the image the audio is equally impressive. The audio blasts through the sound space with immense power. The mix is loud and aggressive. Dialogue is clear and distortion free and the film's music pumps through the surround channels. There's adequate depth created with the ambient and environmental sounds and the track's range is great transitioning to the more action orientated sequences. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
This 2-Disc Fully Loaded Edition features an audio commentary, five featurettes, a theatrical trailer, bonus trailers and some BD-Live features as well as a digital copy of the film. Below is a closer look at these supplements. DISC ONE: First up is a feature-length audio commentary by the film's director Olivier Megaton. Megaton provides a fact-filled track that covers almost every aspect of the film's production. Starting with the development of the film and his involvement, leading through to the production, shooting on location, creating the action scenes among other things. Megaton can be a little hard to understand at times speaking with a heavy French accent but he does plow through the film with a lot of information for fans and that's noteworthy enough. To be honest I was expecting a fluff track with plenty of back patting, and while there was some of that it was mostly a decent track with tidbits of production trivia. "Special Delivery: Transporters in the Real World" featurette runs for 13 minutes 49 seconds, this clip takes a look at security personnel and specially hired agents, operatives and special forces people as they are interviewed about their skills and services. It's a clip that provides insight into dangerous jobs and the challenges they face. It's an interesting clip that could have gone further to look into armies for hire like those used in Iraq. Next up is "The Making-of Transporter 3" featurette 16 minutes 16 seconds. This is a standard, predictable and brief fluff piece, an EPK clip that features the usual amounts of interviews from key cast and crew from the film telling us about the production, their characters and the action etc. We get some behind-the-scenes footage as well in this generic clip made to promote the film. Following that is a "Storyboard Comparison" featurette runs for 2 minutes 47 seconds and takes a look at the importance of storyboarding key sequences. This helps filmmakers plan their shots and work out how to effectively pull off the scenes especially if they feature complex action. "Visual Effects" is an all too brief featurette running 2 minutes 33 seconds this takes a look at two key action sequences from the film and what VFX were applied to create the sequences. It would have been cool to explore these effect in much more depth but instead we get this very brief and fleeting look at them. It's extras for people with attention deficit disorder! "The Sets" is the final featurette which runs for 2 minutes 10 seconds, this takes a look at the film's production design mainly Frank's house which was designed and built for the film. It's a fully functional set and although brief as well it's a neat clip that provides some further trivia about the film's production. Also featured on the disc is the film's original theatrical trailer which runs for 1 minute 8 seconds. There are also some start-up bonus trailers for: - "Crank 2: High Voltage" which runs for 2 minutes 32 seconds. - "The Punisher" which runs for 2 minutes 31 seconds. - "Bangkok Dangerous" which runs for 2 minutes 13 seconds. - "The Spirit" which runs for 2 minutes 20 seconds. - "War" which runs for 37 seconds. The disc includes some Blu-ray exclusive extras mainly a "Bookmark" feature that allows you to bookmark your favorite scenes for quick access as well as some BD-Live features for profile 2.0 players, this is entitled "MOLOG" which is an interactive feature that plays out like a live blog allowing you to interact with the film and with others online. DISC TWO: This second disc is a digital copy of the film.
Overall
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