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TRANSPORTER 3 Luc Besson, a French term meaning “Joel Silver,” has latterly become xXx and The Fast and the Furious producer Neal H. Moritz’s lone rival as reigning king of action cinema du fromage, and the gleefully preposterous Transporter franchise is his ripest creation: a hurtling block-sized brick of Gouda that crushes anything in its path. Once again, good taste and common sense cower in the back seat, as Jason Statham — super-ripped, bullet-headed and expression-adjusted to Perma-Scowl — reprises his role as the world’s studliest deliveryman. The package, this time, is a Ukrainian diplomat’s kidnapped daughter (Natalya Rudakova), a bargaining chip played by thuggish corporateers to thwart environmental reforms; the gimmick is a liquid-bomb bracelet set to go boom if Statham strays more than 75 feet from his car. Fat chance of that: Statham’s single-minded gear head only has eyes for his Audi A8, allowing himself to be seduced only so he can get back his keys (while baring his human-vibrator physique). Directed by Olivier Megaton (no shit) and scripted by longtime collaborators Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, the movie has more lags in action than either of the previous episodes, and somehow the dialogue is even more daft: When easygoing detective buddy François Berléand isn’t sidetracking the action with musings on Dostoyevsky, the leads pass the time between martial-arts throwdowns, 200-mph chases and extinction-level explosions with not one but four separate discussions of cooking technique. But here’s all fans need to know: Yes, Statham strips to the waist multiple times; yes, two dozen hopelessly outnumbered kung fu goons take on our lone hero one by one; and yes, he manages to outpace his Audi by bicycling through a congested sweatshop, freestyling over tables and down hallways, and Evel Knieveling through an upstairs window. In the Besson universe, God bless it, this is called “realism.” (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)
YUVVRAAJ This latest offering from director, sometime screenwriter and full-time blowhard producer Subhash Ghai is a lumbering musical melodrama about the bitter struggle among the estranged brothers of the Yuvvraaj clan to grab a controlling interest in the humungous family fortune, after the death of their father. You don’t have to be a close student of Bollywood narrative conventions to guess that this will end, a couple-or-three hours later, with hugs and sniffles all around. But does the slog to the finish really have to feel this pro forma? Whether Ghai is craning around picturesque Prague or hang-gliding in the Austrian Alps — or cavorting with CG butterflies — his literal-mindedness weighs everything down. The superlative film composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) contributed both the achingly-romantic songs and the lush background score, lending the entire musical fabric an interwoven symphonic coherence — and thankfully at least one actor rises to the occasion. Anil Kapoor, who can be seen as Slumdog's autocratic quizmaster, and who has been wearing his heart on his sleeve in Hindi movies for almost 30 years, gives a beautifully simple, unmannered performance as the designated Yuvvraaj heir: the mentally disabled older brother Gyanesh, an autistic-savant musical prodigy and hapless innocent who everyone else is trying to swindle. When Gyanesh vocalizes ecstatically, in an improvised light-classical style that sounds like scat singing, the sense of his creative rapture is piercingly strong, perhaps because this wonderful actor is tapping into his own joy in performing. Top-billed leading man Salman Khan is effectively cast here as the middle brother, the callow Tom Cruise equivalent in this Rain Man variation, and toward the end he digs deep and comes up with an anguished spasm of regret that feels authentic. Maybe the acting bug is contagious. (Culver Plaza; Fallbrook 7; Naz 8) (David Chute)
