BOTTOM LINE: Filled with a lot of frenetic, fast paced action, this film is totally over-the-top and unbelievable; but it is cool, particularly with Jason Statham driving us through it all.

THE GOOD: Tough guy Jason Statham returns as Frank Martin, the Transporter, who delivers unknown packages from one place to another, no questions asked. This time, he’s out of the game and wants it to stay that way, particularly with his nice Mediterranean retirement setup. All that changes when a friend literally crashes in to his living room in his Audi, and Frank finds himself forced to make another delivery. A genre film like this really only needs a threadbare plot like this to hang all of its sensational action sequences on, and there is plenty to marvel at as Frank gets himself deeper in to the action when everything, as usual, does not go according to plan when he breaks his own rules of never asking about, or never looking at the package. The car chases are the stand-out aspect of this film; you would think that after so many action films there would not be anything new to do but director Olivier Megaton and his crew deliver, even if it does go over the top, particularly in one sequence where Frank drives his car off a bridge and perfectly parks it on top of a moving train. Another nice touch is the fact that Statham cannot leave his car; he has a bomb strapped to his wrist and if he gets over fifty feet from his car it will detonate. This leads to an excellent sequence where bad guy Johnson (Robert Knepper) decides to change drivers and Frank has to desparately get back in to the car before he’s out of range. Statham gets to show off his martial arts prowess in some of the more amusing scenes in the film; a sequence where he disposes of a guy who calls himself the “big one” is quite amusing, as his treatment of ten other guys single-handedly who attempt to force him to get back on course for his delivery. “Transporter 3” is a lot of fun, filled with non-stop action and a very cool Jason Statham.

THE BAD: The relationship between Frank and his passenger Valentina (Natalya Rudakova) is unevenly handled; at times it is touching and funny, at others it is downright embarrassing. One sequence where Valentina takes some pills and gets drunk while Frank is trying to escape from the bad guys is particularly annoying; you just want her to shut up and let Frank do his thing. Also, one cannot take the logic stick to a film like this, but even so, Johnson has the package at the beginning which he insists Frank has to deliver, and then he shows up at the end to receive the package. Did I miss something? Why did he need Frank, or anyone to deliver this package at all, particularly when Johnson needed it to blackmail a high ranking Ukranian politician? Perhaps questions like these should not be asked of a film like this, but even so, it made the climax more than a little strange, even if this bad logic was swallowed up by a frenzy of climactic action sequences.