Rated PG-13 - Running Time: 1:32 - Released 10/11/02
THE TRANSPORTER
Rated PG-13 - Running Time: 1:32 - Released 10/11/02
What happens when you team up Hong Kong writer/producer/director/actor/fight
choreographer Corey Yuen, known for countless Chinese action flicks
dating back to the 1970s, French writer/producer/director Luc
Besson, known for countless French movies like La Femme Nikita
and Messenger: The Story
of Joan of Arc, and American writer/winemaker Robert Mark
Kamen, known for the Karate Kid movies and a really kickass
Cabernet Sauvignon? Here's what happens: everybody gets drunk
and writes an action movie. The Transporter, starring Jason
Statham (Snatch), attempts to
amalgamate Bond, Chan, and Diesel, but those guys all have something
that Statham lacks: charm. This guy is more like Van Damme or
Seagal, delivering kicks, punches, and bullets without giving
us any reason to care. The result is an excruciating experience
of hollow, empty action, with idiotic dialogue, no characterization
to speak of, and a comic-book premise too silly to take seriously.
The only reason I can recommend this movie is for novelty purposes:
it could be a fun activity to count the plot holes and logical
discrepancies. But I'd wait for the video, so you can leave the
room to throw up when necessary.
Statham is Frank Martin, a British ex-military living in France,
who has established a lucrative business transporting people and
packages, no questions asked (except for size, weight, and destination),
for a variety of ill-conceived shady characters. His success is
based primarily on a rigid devotion to three rules: 1) Never change
the deal, 2) No names, and 3) Never open the package. After an
unfathomably ridiculous auto chase scene intended to establish
his technique behind the wheel of his sexy BMW sportscar, which
is fitted out with multiple license plates that he can change
with the touch of a button, we get to the meat of the story. He
is hired by a cartoonishly evil, smirking American named Wall
Street (Matt Schulze) to take an oversized gym bag to a remote
location. All goes well until he gets a flat tire and opens the
trunk to get the spare, and the gym bag starts squirming. At first
he ignores it, but curiosity gets the better of him, and he breaks
rule #3. Inside is a beautiful Asian girl named Lai (Qi Shu),
bound and gagged. Uh-oh, rule #2 broken. When he removes her duct
tape, she tells him of a cargo container filled with 400 of her
Chinese countrymen who are about to arrive in port and be sold
into slavery by Wall Street and her father (Ric Young), an evil
Chinese businessman driven to these desperate acts by the depression
of knowing he looks like an Asian version of Paul Simon in drag.
Upon learning this, Frank decides, what the hell, he's already
broken two rules; he might as well break them all.
From its opening chase (car jumps off bridge, lands squarely in empty spot on car-carrier truck, trucker doesn't notice) to its numerous brain-dead action scenes (man covers self in oil, is therefore too slippery for his assailants to hold onto) to its empty characterizations (burly, emotionless man and hot, panty-clad girl make friends based solely on burliness and panty-cladism), this movie is as fun to sit through as a burning hemorrhoid. Director Yuen and writers Besson and Kamen are obviously under the impression that audiences don't require any logical explanation of events, do not pay attention to details, and are ignorant of basic physics. And Statham seems to buy into that too, making no attempt to achieve a believable, let alone likable, human character. If there is any justice, fate will transport this movie to the video store, to the discount shelf, and finally to the dumpster, where it belongs. *
