The Transporter (2002)

A Triumph of Style *over* Substance
Ay Caramba! Where to start with this fast paced "Ronin" meets stock Jet Li movie. I'd say it was a movie about cars, but that's really only true for the first 1/3rd of it. I'd say it was also about cool kung fu, but that's only for the middle 1/3rd of it. And I'd say it was about waaaaay over the top fight sequences and physics defying stunts, but that was the last 1/3rd of it. So I guess I'll start with the first 1/3rd of the movie and work my way through it in sequence, so that we all know how well this movie started, and why it developed 4 flat wheels, blew its head gasket, and subsequently ran off of a cliff. By the way, "SPOILERS AHEAD!". Consider yourself warned!

Jason Stratham is a "transporter", that is a professional wheelman, or for those of you not in the know, a getaway car driver. Clients, typically those with criminal tendencies who need someone with a good set of wheels and the skills to use them, contact Stratham's character, Frank Martin, and contract him to serve as their getaway driver. And the man plies his trade with unbelievable skill, without so much as a dent or scratch. Frank lives a life of seclusion along the beaches of France after retiring from the military. At least that's his cover to local police investigator Tarconi (played well by really likable Francois Berleand) who is ever suspicious of our main character.

Frank is very careful in his job. He lives by 3 rules; 1 - Never change the deal, 2 - No names mentioned, and 3 - Never open the package. When Frank takes a light job transporting such a package in his trunk, he breaks one of his own rules and looks inside the package to discover a Chinese girl inside. Still trying to maintain his business "ethics" Frank pretends he didn't see anything and delivers the package to the intended client, a smarmy playboy/crime lord type played by Matthew Schulze...who I'm pretty sure was hitting on our hero there for a moment. I think. At any rate Schulze's character knows that Frank's looked inside the package, and attempts to kill him via the use of an exploding suitcase he's asked Frank to transport to another client.

Now, up until this point in the movie everything was working hunkey-dory, which is when the director decided to pour about 2 lbs. of sugar into the gas tank. Stratham, having narrowly avoided being killed, goes on a kung-fu rampage against the goons at Schulze's house, and once finished there steals his Mercedes, one that has a certain Chinese woman hiding in the back seat. This is where the movie starts to ask you to suspend your disbelief. It will be asking this a lot of you in the remaining hour of the film, and in ever-increasing levels.

From here we know that the Chinese woman, played by rather cute Shu Qi, is named "Lai" and was being used as some kind of bartering chip, or as a hostage, or something. The movie is never really clear on why she was being transported, although I guess it might be because she's nosy and put her cute nose somewhere it didn't belong. At any rate Frank cuts Lai loose in his seaside villa and the two ponder their next move. The next morning, Frank's house is attacked by a bunch of goons armed with enough ordinance to make 3 sequels.

After the predictable escape and a totally out of left field sex scene, the plot tells us that this whole mess is about 400 Chinese people trapped in some shipping containers that are about to enter port. Lai wants Frank to help her rescue those people from Schulze and her father, some sort of demented Chinese business man/crime lord with no sideburns. The plot kind of goes in several different directions at this point, and at no time follows anything remotely resembling the word "linear", although "predictable" somehow becomes the mantra of the entire film. There's more kung-fu in this movie than you can shake a chopstick at, and enough over the top antics to keep you paying attention long after the plot has ceased to matter. And it will cease to matter, trust me. And the stuff that just totally disregards physics...it's mind boggling. Here's an impromptu list of absurdities that would keep Einstein busy with formulas long after he'd conquered the Theory of Relativity.

- How exactly did Lai manage to open the door on the car while taped into an office chair, let alone climb into the thing?
- Bullets ricocheting off of oil soaked concrete don't make sparks, but will blow up an oil can floating in the ocean
- One can throw a tire iron, while off balance and clinging to the underside of a truck moving at 60+ mph, with only one hand and successfully smack a driver in a car 10 feet away through an open window. And right in his temple. Ow.
- 200 Chinese people will easily fit in a truck trailer, with lots of room to spare. Also they don't go to the bathroom or eat for a week at a time. When Lai opened the back doors it should have smelled like a poop factory in overdrive. Instead one slightly disheveled child meanders out and the trailer isn't even half packed.
- The piece de la resistance. The infamous parachute scene. Are we supposed to believe that after an impromptu drop (never mind that he dropped from the plane in front of the convoy and then magically appears behind it, in mid-air) from 500 feet that his expensive steerable parachute (which all crop dusters are equipped with) travels at least 70mph? I'm not even going to touch the probability of his actually even being able to *land* on top of the truck, let alone getting into physical contact with it. I don't think there are Navy SEALS alive that could duplicate this one.

Other things I learned from this film:

- All hired goons are masters of the martial arts, in one form or another.
- Said goons are pretty courteous, always taking the time to attack people one at a time, even when outnumbering them 10 to 1.
- Chinese women on the lam can cook local cuisine on their first try and not only make it edible, but make one overly sentimental about it. I wanna see Lai try doing pit-cooked pork shoulder barbecue in one try. Then I'll be a believer.
- European truck cabs are big enough to be apartments
- European buses have lots of foot long metal bars laying around on the floor. If you ever find yourself in one and wonder why watch this movie and you'll understand.
- A stethoscope and a submachine gun are standard ship container searching equipment
- French gendarmes apparently drive in subcompact police cars. This may be fact, but if the local police here start using Honda Civics I *will* be moving.

So after all this, why give the movie 3 stars? Well, to a certain degree there were some things the movie got right. The first 1/3rd of the movie is fantastic. I really, really enjoyed it and wish that the director could have kept it going. The soundtrack is surprisingly good. The music used fits the different scenarios nicely and adds just the right amount of feeling for the scenes.

This is a movie that caters to a particular kind of viewer. If you enjoyed "Ronin" or "Heat" this is *not* going to be your cup of tea. If you loved either of the "Matrix" sequels (unlike the original, which was pretty solid), "The Fast and the Furious", or "xXx" this is gonna be a wonderful experience for you, one you'll want to hastily add to your collection of style over substance collection. And you know who you are. :)

Some Rules Should Never Be Broken...

'Some Rules Should Never Be Broken' could have easily been a tagline used in the advertising for this movie. Sometimes when we break the rules the consequences really hit us hard, which is the case for the main character Frank Martin, in the Cory Yuen (acclaimed Japanese action film director) directed surprise smash hit "The Transporter" starring Jason Statham.

"The Transporter" focuses on ex-special forces soldier Frank Martin (Jason Statham) who makes a living transporting various items for high-paying clients who value timeliness, reliability, and above all else, secrecy. He is a man whose life is dictated by a strict set of rules that he abides by; however, on his most recent job Frank makes a costly mistake. He breaks what could be called his 'Cardinal rule', the one that dictates the transporter is to never open the package he is delivering. But once the rule is broken there's no going back. Now, Frank finds himself on the run with the very package he was assigned to deliver, a young Asian girl who has been trailing an international slave trading ring, and he must summon all of his training if both himself and his package are to survive the pursuit.

I'll be honest, when this movie was first advertised to arrive in theaters, I really didn't give much thought to seeing it. There didn't seem to be all that much appeal to my tastes in the movie. To me, I thought it was just another mindless action flick with little to no story, having one action scene after another being held together by flimsy dialogue that wouldn't have even been acceptable by B-movie standards. So, needless to say I merely forgot about the movie for quite some time, until I happened to catch a glimpse of the trailer for the sequel. What caught my eye with this preview was the fact that if this kind of movie was getting a sequel, then maybe there was more to the original film than I had given it credit for. So, shortly before the release of the sequel, I decided to break down and rent "The Transporter" figuring if nothing else, it will distract me for at least 90 minutes, and who knows maybe I'll even be entertained on some level. After all, someone must have thought the original was pretty good if it warranted a theatrically released sequel rather than one that is straight-to-DVD as most sequels of this variety would have been.

The story for "The Transporter" isn't deep by any means, lets not kid ourselves about that. Even though it's not all that original, and contains a basic plot that has been used countless times before, the dialogue was surprisingly well-written, and the fights were flat-out impressive during some of the action sequences, that you easily overlook the simplicity of the story. Of course, when watching a movie such as this, you really aren't looking for something all that complicated, so there are times when simplicity is the better way to go, and this movie is definitely one of those times.

But this movie would have been nothing if not for the charismatic screen presence of the movie's lead, Jason Statham ("The Italian Job"). Statham brought such an easy going attitude to the character of Frank Martin, when coupled with his intense charisma and screen presence, he took what was a run-of-the-mill action flick and elevated it into a hugely entertaining and memorable action movie that thrills audiences from start to finish. The supporting actors were mostly solid in their performances, all the characters were heavily cliched, but some of the actors appeared to take it upon themselves to add depth to their characters, allowing for a much more enjoyable experience. It's no doubt in my mind that they were the primary reasons that this movie wound up becoming a big hit in theaters, raising this film above the mediocrity it was most likely destined for.

Regardless of how good the actors or the story for any action movie may be, the movie will be nothing if it doesn't feature impressive action sequences that blow the audiences socks off. Which is exactly what many of the numerous action scenes do in "The Transporter", and what's more impressive is that Jason Statham performed a majority of all his stunts. With his intense screen presence that can't be ignored, and his impressive athletic ability as showcased in the numerous fight/stunt sequences it's easy to see why Statham is quickly becoming Hollywood's newest action hero.

If you are a fan of martial arts movies, action films from the likes of Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme, then "The Transporter" is a movie that will be of great interest to you. And in my opinion, will entertain you ten times more than any of Seagal or Van Damme's efforts from recent years, plus the acting and storytelling are better than most entries are in this genre.

"The Transporter" is rated PG-13 for violence, language, and sensuality.

Not much of a let down but fun to watch
The opening third of the flick is by far the best part. Frank Martin lives by his three rules: never alter the deal, no names, never open the package. Up until he breaks one of his rules the movie is an interesting look at a man who lives by his own terms in an extremely violent and dangerous portion of the world. Unfortunately after he finds the girl the movie breaks down into a series of cliches and explosions that are less interesting.

I have liked Jason Statham a lot not just in those English gangster movies but in "The One" with Jet Li and John Carpenter's "Ghosts of Mars," he deserves to be a star in his own right and this movie co-starring a vehicle should have been the right vehicle for him. It's a shame he was given so little to do, aside from kicking the crap out of many people, which he does quite handily. There's a lot of talk about "rules" in this movie and the movie itself obeys the rules of martial arts onscreen, one being that when the hero is facing a bunch of bad guys, they're only allowed to attack him one or two at a time, and they're not allowed to have guns unless they stand so close that the hero can disarm them. Jackie Chan's classic shtick of picking up any handy item to use as a weapon is alive and well here, likewise Chan's trademark element of farce/slapstick, e.g. the oil-slick brouhaha. And we have death-defying stunts galore and tire-squealing car chases and all sorts of goings -on. Yet somehow Mr. Statham himself seems to get lost in the proceedings.

It's really not his fault. His character is very sketchily written, the plot seems to have been made up as they went along a la "Casablanca," and the desired chemistry between him and the Chinese heroine just doesn't happen. I don't know who the actress is or what she did previously, and she's, you know, cute and all that, but she just did nothing for me whatsoever, and apparently not much for Jason Statham either. She's no Bai Ling, let's say, much less a Lucy Liu or Kelly Hu or--dare I mention the name--Michelle Yeoh aka Michelle Kwan. She's a cypher and even the writers seem to have grasped that; look how long they keep her bound and gagged onscreen to try to generate some fetishistic interest in what's happening with her. "The Big Hit," another movie with a kidnapped Chinese chick falling for the kidnapper, only took about five minutes to generate the romantic oomph that his one never really achieves. The movie doesn't even bother including the usually obligatory closing shot of the hero & heroine alone together, as though acknowledging they were never really an item. Bottom line, I did enjoy this it's a solid action flick with a lot of high-powered stunts and a winning performance by Jason Statham in the lead, though one wonders what sort of movie would have resulted had Frank just closed the trunk again.