Jason Statham and the Eco-Weenies of Doom

Transporter 3. Directed by Olivier Megaton. Starring Jason Statham, Natalya Rudakova, and Francois Berleand.

Eco-terrorists? Transporter 3 was a good film, don't get me wrong, even if the law of diminishing returns is probably starting to kick in right about now. But fucking eco-terrorists? Are you kidding me? In a world where shit like this happens all the time I can't believe the audience is being given generic eco-terrorists. C'mon guys. It's easier than you think. Just pick up a newspaper, or go to any blog, and you'll find tons of ideas for interesting heroes and villains.

I wasn't crazy about them being featured in Quantum of Solace, but I was prepared to go along with it on that one occasion. Unless it's a film like Deliverance, the environment is a pretty poor device for generating dramatic tension and conflict, at least in an action film.

I should note, at this point, that I mean real action films. The kind where the film director uses stuntmen - sometimes even the star himself - instead of CGI during action sequences. None of this Day After Tomorrow shit. I'm talking balls to wall, straight ahead, Hong Kong action films. Not that I've seen a lot of those. I'm more of a seventies Japanese martial arts films aficionado myself. But you get the idea.

But I digress. Drugs, cash, women, these are all motivations that are relatively easy to understand, especially on a visceral level. When the villain is kicking a small dog, sniffing a pair of panties that he has stolen from an all girl's private school, and selling crack to under-age inner city school children, I immediately recognize the fact that this is indeed, a bad person.

But dumping toxic waste into a river? Not only does it lack any visual oomph, but it shows a real lack of artistic courage. Fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may or may not be the answer. However, I can't help but think that the cold war eventually ended not just because of politicians, but because of people working in the entertainment industry as well.

Update: More on artistic courage here... and Mark Steyn has a movie idea that will never make it to the big screen, but you'll have to scroll down to read about it.