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Sunday, June 13, 2010

BD impressions: Transporter 3

5:03 PM / BD Impressions / 4 Comments

In THE TRANSPORTER, Jason Statham (I'm not going to call the character by his name - he's just Jason Statham being Jason Statham) drove bank robbers to safety and indulged in people trafficking with nary the blink of an eye. In TRANSPORTER 2, he jacked that in in favour of ferrying a rich brat to and from dental appointments. In TRANSPORTER 3, he FALLS IN LOVE, and the series (I'm assuming they aren't planning on making any more) dies with a whimper rather than a bang.

With TRANSPORTER 1 and 2 director Louis Leterrier's star ascendant, Olivier Megaton takes up the reins for this third outing. However, while Megaton certainly deserves his share of the blame for the film's problems (in terms of camerawork and editing sensibility, think Michael Bay on acid - yeah, it's that bad), it wouldn't be fair to claim that everything is down to him. Luc Besson and regular writing partner Robert Kamen's script is a mess, reining in the over-the-top nature of the second film in favour of something that tries desperately to be epic and taken seriously, meaning that the more ridiculous elements (the over-the-top car chases, the blatant homoeroticism that has Statham removing his shirt on the flimsiest of pretences) don't gel at all, resulting in a film that just doesn't know what it wants to be. The plot is overly convoluted, to the extent that, when the credits began to roll, I wasn't sure what had actually happened - not a good state of affairs for the latest instalment in a series of deliriously stupid summer blockbusters.

Besson also throws in the most annoying sidekick this side of Spielberg's wife in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Besson apparently spotted Natalya Rudakova in the street, took a shine for her and paid for her to take acting lessons - a wasted investment if ever there was one, because her performance, to put it bluntly, sucks. Not that a better actress would necessarily have made the role any more palatable, as her character's personality is so loathsome that I spent the bulk of the film hoping she'd get it in the neck. Nice freckles, though.

So, in summary: TRANSPORTER 2 > THE TRANSPORTER > TRANSPORTER 3.

Image quality: This is comfortably the best-looking of the TRANSPORTER films on BD - if you compare the captures below to those from the first film, you can clearly see just how much the technology improved in the space of a few years. Detail is razor-sharp, and I'm convinced that the noticeable haloing in Example 13 and Example 21 is some sort of photographic effect rather than tampering (any idea if that particular scene was shot against green screen?). Alas, the excess of quick Michael Bay-style cutting in this film takes its toll, and despite the generous bit rate there are some really nasty compression artefacts at times (see Example 7). Generally they're not too distracting in motion, because the camera rarely remains still long enough for them to register, but their presence is disappointing nonetheless and well below the standard I've come to expect from Icon as far as encoding goes. 9/10

Transporter 3
studio: Icon; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 29 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 40.13 Mbit/sec

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