Luc Besson has taken it upon himself to build a little empire smack in the heart of the French film industry. It's a close approximation to a French Hollywood, specifically an action-genre Hollywood — and its getting bigger everyday. For mindless, gratuitous violence, nonsensical plots and endless car chases (oui, le "Taxi" franchise!") that are surely responsible for a significant percentage of global warming, Besson is your man in Europe. He writes, he directs, he produces — he has his finger lodged somewhere in almost every action movie coming out of the continent. Who would have thought that the man who made the eco-correct movie of the late 20th century ("Le Grand Bleu") could morph into such a steel-and-tire crunching baddie? Oh well. The world changes, and so does Besson. But as far as the latest installment in the "Transporter" series is concerned, Besson is the best thing that ever happened.

For "Transporter 3" he teams up (as writer and producer) with choreographer Corey Yuan (who also directed the very first "Transporter") and disciple director Olivier Megaton (whose surname was adopted from the fact that this guy's birthday coincides with the bombing of Hiroshima), and between the three of them, there's precious little in the tightly wound 100-minute story that's not explosively, deliciously, brain-cell-destroyingly ludicrous. The whole package is like a needless and addictive toy, coated with an enticing veneer of plasticky metal and hazardous to the body and to the environment in some cheap, toyish way. Yeah, Luc!

Besson and Co., are aided by the Transporter himself: Frank Martin (Jason Statham), who it seems, has added another 12 hours of gym time to his daily regimen in order to strut some extraordinary studishness, and we're talking about an actor who already has one of the best physiques in the film industry.