Grade: B-

Bottom Line: Slick moves and lame dialogue makes Transporter 3 all fun and no substance, but what did you expect?

Replace Daniel Craig with Jason Statham, Olga Kurylenko with Natalya Rudakova and trade in the Aston Martin DBS with an armored Audi S8. Shake it all up with some fast-paced camera work and a vapid script co-written by French filmmaking legend Luc Besson (Léon, The Fifth Element, Taxi) and Robert Mark Kamen (The Karate Kid series, Gladiator), and you have Transporter 3, the most recent installment of the Transporter series.

This film finds Frank Martin (Statham) sitting pretty in the south of France, fishing with his French inspector buddy, Tarconi (Francois Berleand). Meanwhile, a ship is floating out in the Black Sea. It looks like any other ship, except, of course, it’s not. There’s some mysterious chemical that leaves two crew members dead after they open the containers, thinking that they were holding booze instead.

On land, a man drives through an inspection point, and a cool car chase ensues, resulting into the man crashing into Martin’s house and a new transporter job for Martin. Martin doesn’t exactly want the job, but a ticking bracelet keeps him chained to the steering wheel (or at least, within a 25-feet radius). He’s unhappily accompanied by a red-headed East European, Valentina (Rudakova), who is cold and pessimistic until after a few sips of vodka. Along the way, they also run into a creepy Samuel L. Jackson look-a-like (Eriq Ebouaney) who just throws poker-face looks behind his sunglasses.

Martin’s mission is to transport red bags containing phone books? That’s when everything clicks for Martin both love and fighting-wise, and the rest of the film becomes somewhat predictable for the audience.

Transporter 3 is certainly not Besson’s best work, and you almost have to wonder if these Transporter films would have been a little wittier if they were done in French, Besson’s native language. The dialogue is truly as flat as it gets with terrible attempts at comic relief (you know you’re reaching when you make a dull reference to Donald Trump’s one-liner, “You’re fired.”).

The acting overall, though, wasn’t terrible, but that’s partly because the actors are just like the people they play. Statham, touted by some critics as the next Vin Diesel, is great as the roguish Martin, which isn’t surprising given his past as a black market salesman before being picked up by Guy Ritchie for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Berleand, of course, is as stereotypically French as possible. Rudakova, however, slinked around the film like a Bond girl reject. Her best moments were when she was asleep—all moments awake were grueling to watch as she overacted.

Transporter 3 also tries hard to stay relevant—environmental issues are tossed around, and terrorist techniques (the reason why we’re not allowed to bring water bottles into airports) are used to keep Martin and Valentina in line. However, all of it seems absolutely forced as if Besson and Kamen had a checklist of items they wanted to include in the screenplay.

Still, once you get past the fact that the script is dry and the plot is lackluster, the film is actually not that bad. The charm of Transporter 3 is its slick directing and cinematography, the best scene being the bicycle and car chase, which completely inspired me to ride my bicycle more often. The director, Olivier Megaton (Exit, No Happy End) recycles used techniques in the action scenes but in a way that seemed fresh and flashy.

That interesting direction is the only reason why Transporter 3 is more than a James Bond movie done on the cheap. However, this film is truly lacking in terms of wit and twists, especially when compared to other movies in its genre, making it all brawn and no brain. With another similar new release out that’s a little more exciting (cough, Quantum of Solace, cough), I’d recommend transporting yourself away from Transporter 3.