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Respect the man’s car, and he’ll respect you. Jason Statham burst onto the scene in 2002’s The Transporter. A surprise critical and audience hit. The acting and story telling in the first film where all top notch, while the action scenes were inventive, Director Corey Yuen in your face, quick cut, shaky cam style gave me a literal headache. I felt like I was getting seizures trying to follow what the heck was going on.
Thankfully the new director, Louis Leterrier, the man who did Jet Li’s “”Unleashed”” knows how to do an action scene. He’s not nearly as flashy Yuen, and that’s why “”The Transporter 2″” is that rare sequel that is better than the original. I can talk about the plot, but when you have a crazy waif of a woman – Lola (Katie Nauta), who walks around the middle of downtown Miami in a Fredericks of Hollywood Lingerie set with 6 inch cherry red, stiletto pumps, carrying and using two machine guns. Do we really need to discuss the “”plot?””
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Ok, I guess we do, where to begin? Ok, how about this, this time out our swab, debonair, hero, Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is in the states doing a favor for a friend. He’s playing Driver, for a precocious kid who is the child of a wealthy businessman, Ted Billings (Matthew Modine) who also happens to be the new U.S. Drug Czar. The Columbians hire mercenary Gianni (Alessandro Gassman) to take out all the World’s Drug Czars who are visiting Miami to attend a major conference. His big plan is to infect Billing’s kid with a designer drug and then pass that infection along to conference attendees. It’s a flawless plan, but he didn’t count on the Driver. This is a by the numbers action film plot, that has no twists, no turns, and several major plot holes you can drive a tank through. Spoiler Alert SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS[pagebreak]
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END SPOILER ALERTThere’s a moment at the end of the film where Gianni takes the entire antidote, so he becomes the only source for a cure, thus when Martin finally confronts him, he realizes that he can’t kill him. This would be all well and good, if 10 minutes before this confrontation Martin didn’t provide a vaccine for the kid. So the obvious question, that kept screaming through my head, was – why the heck didn’t they just use the kid’s blood to create a vaccine? The other problem is, early in the film they set up the idea that Gianni is a real “”bad ass”” fighter, but the final confrontation takes place in a small, cramped plane, so all you get are a bunch of standard punches but not much else and a climax that included one of the worst examples of CGI Use ever used in a studio film.The acting ranged from good to ridiculous. Statham’s performance was top notch, he didn’t have to say much but his fighting and stoic facial expressions worked for him. After two Transporter films I still have no idea what his actual fighting skill is like. Both directors did utilized quick edits to stage all of his sequences. Neither film included stationary long shots of him pulling off some of the impossible kicks and jumps that he does. Gassman and Modine seemed like they were in a totally different film.Despite some serious flaws, and issues with the plot, “”The Transporter 2″” is a fun, silly, over the top, by the numbers action film. That contain some truly inventive moments. You watch it with a smile on your face but it’s instantly forgettable.
Final Grade B-EM Review byMichelle AlexandriaOriginally Posted 09/02/05