See it or Skip it: Transporter 3

If Jason Bourne and Mario Andretti had a love child, it would be Frank Martin in Luc Besson’s Transporter series.

After two thrilling, action-packed installments, Jason Statham returns to the franchise that made him a star as Martin, a driver notorious throughout the underworld for making sure precious cargo arrives. But the third time around, he does the unthinkable; he doesn’t deliver and neither does the film.

Sort of like Speed but with distance instead of velocity, Frank finds himself kidnapped by a sinister American (Prison Break’s Robert Knepper) who has clamped an exploding bracelet around his wrist. If he moves more than 75 feet from his car, he’ll blow up. Thanks to this conceit, director Olivier Megaton (whose previous claim to fame was second unit direction on the flop Hitman, which, at least, left him some dignity) gets to tether the audience to the car and its occupants, including Frank’s passenger/love interest, a bratty Ukrainian redhead named Valentina (newcomer Natalya Rudakova, who should NEVER be allowed to act again. It’s hands down the worst performance of the year, if not the decade.)

Like a child on the way to Grandma’s house, you may find yourself whining, “Are we there yet?” over and over as the film plods on so relentlessly, not even the sight of Statham’s stellar physique can rattle it back to life.

Transporter 3 is a poorly conceived, amateurishly directed, appalling written debacle far beneath the standard set by the first two go-rounds.

Skip it.