Taxi 3

Continuing my plan to watch every Sly Stallone movie in his filmography in order, I come to his cameo in Taxi 3.

Plot In A Paragraph: A gang of thieves calling themselves the Santa Claus Gang are running riot, and the police are nowhere near catching them. Police Captain Gilbert is distracted by a Chinese reporter writing a story on his squad, detective Emilien's wife has just announced that she's pregnant, and taxi driver Daniel is in the midst of a relationship crisis. After a string of mistakes in which the thieves outsmart the police several times with a reporter there to report on it all, Daniel steps in to help out.

The tile sequence is fun, as its basically a rip off various James Bond titles

Director Gerard Krawczyk had directed writer Luc Besson's last movie 'Wasabi' starring Jean Reno. Funnily enough, in the street market, you can clearly see behind Émilien in at least two shots a poster for 'Wasabi'

Stallone briefly pops up for a taxi ride in the first couple of mins.

The third chapter in the “Taxi” series is a definite step down from the second. Director Gérard Krawczyk and screenwriter Luc Besson have managed to introduce some new elements to the franchise (a pre-credits Stallone cameo, a Bond-style title sequence, a gigantic 4 X 4 crashing everything on its path, bank robbers disguised as Santa Clauses, future parenthood, the action moving to the Swiss Alps in the last 20 minutes and Daniel's taxi functioning as a snowmobile, etc.) to justify making this sequel. However, Besson's script remains very thin (the film barely fills up 83 minutes, long closing credits included), and the absence of a climactic set-piece is especially disappointing. The characters still have appeal, and the introduction of exotic beauty Bai Ling is a plus; on the other hand, those expecting Emma Sjöberg to get involved in the action in the same way she was in "Taxi 2" should forget about it: her character is already 8 months pregnant as the movie opens. (**)

The best thing I can say about this movie is that it made me laugh. Some of the jokes and scenes were easily on level with the first two movies. Add to that healthy chemistry between the two leads and you get all the ingredients needed for a good buddy-cop movie.

Unfortunately, Besson simply fails to string these bits and pieces into a coherent whole. Bad guys are the repeat from the second part, only without kung-fu and cool cars (pretty stupid decision for a movie targeting car enthusiast), and their plans and actions are complete nonsense. The whole plot seems to be there just as an excuse to throw in a bunch of obvious self-references, lame cameos (Sylvester Stalone as a secret agent?) and extreme sport mix-tapes (Besson's latest fetish, it seems).

Action scenes are the final nail on the coffin. The Taxi series never had really spectacular car chases (the closest they came was the Paris scene in Taxi II), but they at least HAD some chases. Here, it's all bikes, monster-trucks, roller-skates and skis. Daniel's taxi performs several stunts and grows a few more SF accessories, but it doesn't really have much to work with, given the opposing arsenal.

Overall, the movie has some funny bits (even more if you speak French), but the rest of it was pretty disappointing.

Yes, it is funny but I am getting a little tired of watching the same thing the third time around. I like the first one because it was fresh and different... But, Taxi 3 is just a copy of the previous 2 with a little new twist... I hope there will be no Taxi 4 coming out any time soon...

If you like Taxi 1 and Taxi 2, you must see Taxi 3. It isn't a perfect movie but is still funny and has good Taxi stunt scenes (speed, pursuit, braking e.t.c) like Taxi 1 and 2. The cops (police) can't drive!! (they always crash their cars and this is very funny).

It's too bad the movie is too short, but is entertaining almost all the time. I would prefer the bad guys drive cars like the Mercedes(Taxi 1) or the black Lancer Evos (Taxi 2)instead of skates. This movie never arrived to México so I watched on TV. Yes, I think Taxi 1 and 2 are better, but again, this movie (Taxi 3) is still funny. Very good actors and actress

Taxi 4 I haven't seen yet!!