Taxi 3 (2003)

A man in a suit, his face hidden by a motorcycle helmet, is pursued by several men on rollerblades. Like ninjas, the fugitive and his pursuers run and leap across the buildings of Marseille. After stealing a bicycle, the man reaches the Old Port. On the quay, he tries to steal a skateboard, but a group of children stops him by pointing their pistols at him. To escape his pursuers, the man, who is a spy, comes across Daniel’s taxi while Daniel is in the middle of his lunch break and asks him to get him to the airport in 20 minutes. During the trip, Daniel tests a new product to boost his engine so he can shake off the new police patrol assigned to intercept him. When they arrive, Daniel notices that his passenger is the first person not to throw up after an ultra-fast ride. A helicopter arrives, and the spy thanks Daniel as he is hoisted aboard. For eight months, Émilien has been obsessed with a mysterious gang of bank robbers disguised as Santa Clauses. Christmas is approaching, and it will become increasingly difficult to catch them amid the crowds and the real Santas. As a result, he won’t let Petra, who has become his wife, tell him something important. Lily, tired of living in a garage and seeing her boyfriend constantly with his car, leaves Daniel, reproaching him for not paying enough attention to her. At a café terrace, Émilien discusses the investigation with his colleague Alain, who has become a Bob Marley fan. They notice a tall Santa handing out flyers drop a gun and then pick it up. For Émilien, this is a chance to arrest a member of the gang, especially since an armored cash-in-transit truck has just parked a few dozen meters away. Like a superhero, Émilien yells for everyone to get down and throws himself at Santa, while the armed cash-in-transit guards drive off. Émilien and Alain take the fake Santa to Commissioner Gibert’s office and mock him for stupidly dropping his gun. Gibert is away, so Émilien sits in his chair and appoints himself boss, while Alain beats Santa with a telephone directory to make him talk. Émilien uses the number engraved on the gun to search the computer for its owner and discovers that it is Gibert’s weapon. Alain removes the tape from Santa’s mouth, and it turns out that he is none other than Commissioner Gibert, disguised to infiltrate the Santa gang. While waiting for someone to release him from his handcuffs, Gibert is visited by Qiu, a Chinese-Swiss journalist who wants to do a report on the French police. Émilien is devastated by his blunder, and Petra comes to tell him that she is pregnant—and has been for eight months. The policeman has been so absorbed in his work that he hasn’t noticed Petra’s big belly, the ultrasound photos, or the cabbages she has placed in her husband’s office. Overjoyed, Émilien is thrilled to be becoming a father. Meanwhile, Daniel deeply regrets Lily’s departure and comes across a strange object in the bathroom. He rushes to the pharmacy, where the pharmacist tells him it’s a next-generation ovulation test. The pharmacist decides to show Daniel how much his daughter Angèle knows: she knows all the medicines by heart. Seeing the test, the young woman thinks it is hers and admits that she slept with a stranger while drunk. Realizing that Lily is pregnant, Daniel leaves the pharmacist, who is utterly distraught. The same goes for the policewoman about to ticket him for illegal parking: Daniel uses the gadgets in his taxi to get her out of his way. Gibert summons his teams to his office, especially since the local press is reporting on his incompetence. He decides to mobilize all his forces and make stopping the Santa gang a priority, with the watchwords “Coordination, Reflection, Action” for Operation Snow White. Opening a Christmas present on his desk, he realizes it is a taunt from the Santa gang: they have set a meeting with the police at Europa Bank in five minutes. Émilien, however, hasn’t followed any of the meeting; he is over the moon since learning he is going to be a father. The police position themselves outside the bank to stop the robbers, but the gang escapes in a monster truck that crushes Gibert’s car. Alain tries to requisition a car, but a motorist hits him. The police give chase as the monster truck makes its way through Marseille, driving over residents’ cars and barging into houses. It leaves the car carrying Gibert, Émilien, Alain, and Qiu at the bottom of a swimming pool, where it is hit by their colleagues’ cars in a chain reaction. Fortunately, they can count on their driver, who was trained as a lifeguard, to get them out. Daniel, meanwhile, is determined to win Lily back. She has gone home to her parents, where he finds her father, General Bertineau, waiting for his driver. The driver has had an accident, so Daniel offers to take him—and Lily, who has to go to the doctor and still hasn’t forgiven Daniel. During the drive, Lily realizes that Daniel, talking with her father, seems determined to work less and take his role as a father seriously. After dropping Lily off outside her doctor’s office, Daniel floors it to take the general to the police station. Meanwhile, Qiu gives Gibert a massage and takes the opportunity to hack into his computer. However, she has to leave when senior officers, including Bertineau, enter the office. Émilien joins Daniel in his taxi, and the two friends realize they are going to become fathers at the same time. Daniel points out to Émilien that they will both have to ease off work to look after their wives and children. Even so, Émilien orders Daniel to pursue a Santa on a scooter. They arrive at an abandoned factory where other Santas are at work. Daniel advises Émilien to let Gibert handle the case, but the policeman, not wanting to make another blunder, wants all the information at hand. He tries to jump across to the opposite building, but trips over his untied shoelace and crashes into a rubbish bin. Alerted by the noise, the Santas capture him and take him to a Chinese salon, where Qiu, the journalist, is waiting. To torture him, she tries to seduce him, while Daniel alerts the police that Émilien has been kidnapped. The entire police station prepares to catch the Santas outside the bank they have just robbed, with plenty of equipment ready to disable the monster truck. But the criminals, who turn out to be Chinese, escape on rollerblades, warned in their own language by Qiu, who is in Gibert’s car with Émilien’s cellphone, which she stole from him. (Gibert thought she had bought the same model as his.) Qiu drives off in a police car, and Daniel follows in his taxi. A little later, the Chinese leave Émilien tied to a chair in an old warehouse. Qiu taunts him one last time before activating a mechanism that will set a wrecking ball in motion in five minutes and crush the policeman. The Chinese leave, and Daniel, who has followed them, manages to rescue Émilien at the last moment. Noticing slushy snow on the ground and knowing that Qiu wears fur boots, Daniel and Émilien realize that the Chinese are heading through the Alps, where they will blend in with the skiers and deposit the stolen money in Swiss bank accounts. Qiu is half Swiss on her father’s side. A few hours later, Daniel and Émilien arrive in Tignes in the taxi and pick up the Chinese gang’s trail. The gang has taken a snow groomer to cross the snow off-piste. With the help of new equipment fitted to the taxi, Daniel and Émilien follow them through the snow and track them to their chalet. Once there, they inform Bertineau, who launches an operation using his military aircraft to fly over the ski resort and intercept the Chinese. But the gang leaves the chalet on skis and heads back down toward the resort, with the taxi following them. Aboard Bertineau’s military aircraft as it flies over Tignes, elite police officers parachute out. Gibert, a former member of the Alpine Hunters, insisted on taking part in the operation. Because his strap is too short, he takes one tumble after another. Despite Alain’s warnings, the commissioner eventually cuts the strap and jumps into the void with his parachute. As the taxi crashes a ski competition in pursuit of the Chinese, they reach their helicopter, but police officers hidden under the snow spring out and grab Qiu and her gang. Émilien gets back the cellphone Qiu stole from him during the torture session, and Daniel points out that he isn’t very resentful, considering he was tortured for hours. Gibert, meanwhile, falls through a hole in the ice and plunges into a frozen lake. Just as Émilien is about to pull him out, the young policeman gets a call from Petra, who is about to give birth. He asks Daniel to help pull the commissioner out of the frozen lake and take him away, while Émilien hurries to the hospital to join his wife. After a difficult labor for Petra and several moments of confusion for Émilien, the baby is finally born—a boy. Although he had promised his wife he wouldn’t faint, Émilien passes out just as he is about to cut the umbilical cord. In the corridors, Daniel runs into Lily. He apologizes for not paying enough attention to her, promises he will be a good father, and asks her to marry him. Lily accepts and takes him to make love in the intensive care unit, while Gibert, completely frozen, is wheeled away in a wheelchair, repeating, “É...mi...lien...”