Taxi 3 (2003)

Taxi 3 arrived in 2003 as the third entry in a franchise that had already settled into its formula: a Marseille taxi driver, a hapless police captain, and a Peugeot capable of feats that defy physics, traffic law, and municipal paperwork. The film escalates with a certain professional cheer. Caterpillar tracks appear. The opening titles borrow the James Bond template, the ski chase borrows more of it, and the whole contraption is built for velocity and very little else. It asks nothing of us but a laugh and a shrug. It receives both.

The cast is where a modern critic's instincts begin to twitch, and then settle back down. Samy Naceri, of Algerian descent, anchors the film as Daniel. Bai Ling turns up as the Chinese reporter shadowing the squad. Their presence is treated as ordinary municipal fact. Nobody remarks on it. Nobody frames it. Nobody in the screenplay appears aware that a statement has been made. Emma Wiklund and Marion Cotillard occupy the domestic subplot, where the crisis is a pregnancy and the resolution is forgiveness. It is the thinnest possible gesture toward a relationship and it carries no argument about anything. Diversity here is hiring. The film hired people and moved on.

Everything else is absent, and the absences are total. The thieves dress as Santa Claus, which is seasonal cosplay and not a critique of consumption. The taxi burns fuel at a rate that would alarm a climatologist, and no character raises the subject. The villains are caught by a fast car, not by the redistribution of wealth. There is no sermon, no lesson, no moment where someone turns to the camera and explains what we are meant to feel. The credits roll and no viewer leaves improved. That is not a failure of craft. It is a fact of classification, and classification, like this franchise, keeps moving whether we enjoy the ride or not. We classify anyway. The work is thankless and the work continues.

The only genuine gravity attached to this production sits offscreen, in a 2001 stunt accident that left a performer permanently disabled, a detail the film's breezy finale does nothing to acknowledge. The archive remembers. The movie does not. Such is the job.

{"thematic_tags": ["sequel"]}}