With Transporter 3 now in theatres, the director of the first two films is claiming the sex scenes between Transporter star Jason Statham and actress Natalya Rudakova in the latest installment are misleading -- because the character Statham plays in the films is gay. Lou Letterier, who directed the first two films in the franchise, outed the character of Frank Martin in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. "If you watch the movie and you know he's gay, it becomes so much more fun. It's so great -- the first gay action movie hero!” He continued, “Action fans in general are pretty homophobic. You see these tough guys who say, 'The Transporter, that's such a great movie!’ If they only knew they're really cheering for a new kind of action hero.” Letterier pointed to a scene in the second film in which a character played by model Amber Valetta makes a play for Martin, only to be rebuffed by the line “It's because of who I am.” “That’s him coming out,” Letterier said. Though Letterier has yet to see the latest installment, which is directed by Oliver Megaton, he said he recently went back and watched the first films and realized they weren’t as gay as he had originally intended. “I was sick over the weekend and my 2 Transporters were on, so I watched them and in fact they aren't that gay,” Leterrier wrote in an e-mail to the Times. “But it makes for fun movie legends.”
- Advocate