Transporter 3 (15)

FACT - there are many and varied ways of creating sexual tension on screen.

Another fact - getting your two leads to yap endlessly about what they fancy for dinner is not one of them.

So forget the car crashes, the explosions, the frankly preposterous stunt-work in this magnificently idiotic Anglo-French action threequel.

Because the only thing you'll be asking yourself as you leave the cinema is: "Did Jason Statham really just get into that Ukranian bird's pants by getting her excited about a casserole?"

As a real-life seduction technique, it's probably on a par with sneaking up on women with a claw hammer.

Growling

But when you hear the Stath growling, "And for dessert?" while his hot ginger passenger (Natalya Rudakova) gets visible loin palpitations in the seat beside him, it nearly looks plausible. Nearly.

Other than the food-based flirting, Transporter 3 doesn't mess with the winning formula of Transporters 1 and 2 -ie Statham drives around at high speeds, punching Europeans.

The story kicks off in Marseilles, where a second Transporter is trying to pull off a job-delivering a kidnapped politician's daughter to some nasty eco-terrorists-that Statham turned down.

Wisely, as it happens. Because a bomb's been tied to his wrist that will explode if he goes more than 75ft away from the car.

Of course, within the first five minutes, he's done just that (shortly after crashing the car through the wall of Statham's living room, for reasons way too contrived to go into here.)

So Jase, who's now in phase two of getting rid of that weird mid-Atlantic accent from Transporter 1, ends up doing the job. And, by extension, the politician's daughter.

This involves a crazy road trip from France to Romania, driving off bridges, firing machine guns and rocket launchers, and wizzing on the floor of an Eastern European service station.

And at least three brawls that feature the special kind of Kung Fu where you gradually lose your clothes during the fight.

The dialogue accompanying all this mayhem presents us with two possibilities: either the scriptwriter's smart and funny with a devastating ear for irony, or he's a complete and utter numbskull.

After some thought I'm plumping for the former. Because coming up with lines like: "Tonight this will all be over and we'll be laughing about it over a chicken kiev," takes a special kind of genius.

As does the following exchange, which goes down as my favourite movie phone call of the entire year:

Statham (on the phone to police): "Get your people here! I'm drowning in a lake!"

Cop 1: "Which lake? Can you be any more precise?"

Statham: "I drove into it off a bridge."

Cop 2: "I know that lake, it's about ten minutes from here." But even if this kind of tongue-in-cheek nonsense isn't your cup of tea, you'll be more than happy to overlook all of it for the superbly conceived action scenes.

In terms of creativity, visual flair and downright badassedness, very little can top seeing Statham RAIL-GRIND A BMX through a Hungarian sweatshop, in pursuit of a bad guy who's DRIVING THE CAR AT 100MPH in order to DETONATE JASON'S WRIST BOMB.

Other insane bits that are impossible to write about without bold capital letters include a car chase where Statham drives his Audi ON ITS SIDE between TWO MASSIVE LORRIES, and the one where he survives underwater for TEN MINUTES by breathing the air from HIS CAR TYRES.

Flipping

It's fast, fun and completely flipping mental. And if you're expecting anything else, forget it-even the director Olivier Megaton is named after a nuclear blast, for crying out loud.

But that's the whole point, innit? And I know I'm not the only one who'd rather see Statham pratting around with guns, cars, babes and Kung Fu for 90 minutes than sit through another three hours of some Oscar wannabe wailing and gnashing their teeth, with one eye trained on an ad deal with Chanel.

No doubt Transporter 3 will get bad reviews from the same joyless sods who sneered at Statham's other recent trash masterpiece, Death Race, and hated High School Musical 3 and Mamma Mia.

Bollards to 'em. This film is ace . . .

OUT ON FRIDAY