Transporter 2 (2005) Dir: Louis Leterrier

Oh dear. Where has it all gone wrong? I really enjoyed The Transporter. It was the kind of film where you just have to go along with the ludicrousness of the plot and sit back and enjoy the dumb action set pieces. You know, fun. Transporter 2, however, really tested my patience.

Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is now working in Miami only this time, instead of transporting illicit goods he's driving the precocious kid of a wealthy couple (Matthew Modine and Amber Valletta) to and from school. Modine is an obnoxious politician type (aren't they all?) and Valletta is his long suffering wife ("He's never around" yadda yadda yadda, something about trite character development). So far so humdrum. But then, guess what, kid gets kidnapped and it's Frank to the rescue. But it's not just a simple kidnapping because, get this, bad guys inject kid with virus so that kid will  breath virus on dad and dad will subsequently breathe virus on a whole bunch of other political types, thus carving way for Columbian drug cartel bad guys to make their move. Or something. You couldn't make this shit up. Well, you could. And they did. And someone financed the thing.

There are some decent enough action sequences but most of them seem to be lifted from Jackie Chan movies like Police Story and Armour of God and the like. We also have innumerable chase scenes including a jet ski chasing a bus, a car chasing a helicopter, a car chasing a plane and so on and so on. On paper all this sounds like fun but there's something missing and I'm not quite sure what it is. Maybe it's the fact that Statham keeps his shirt on in this one or maybe it's the fact that with an obviously bigger budget they couldn't be arsed putting some of that money into a more coherent plot.

Where are my fucking clothes?

I like Statham. He's a limited actor but he plays to his strengths and is always watchable. The villains, however, are totally unconvincing and include an Uzi-wielding, Victoria's Secret-wearing Kate Nauta who seems to spend the entire film in her smalls killing everyone who crosses her path.

I had high hopes for this after the cheese-fest that was The Transporter but sometimes you can overdose on cheese. Still, if the sight of Jason Statham taking air from a dead man's lungs while underwater is something you need to see then have at it.

The Transporter (2002) Dir: Corey Yuen

There's a moment in The Transporter when you just have to ignore the sheer idiocy of the plot, the ropy acting, the cheesy dialogue and sit back, with a grin on  your face and think, hey, I'm actually enjoying this. That moment comes when a topless Jason Statham pours a bucket of car oil over himself and takes out several bad guys in a slipping and sliding martial arts fight. It is both hilarious and wonderful in equal measure and it's not the only time that Statham gets his shirt off in this film.

I always thought my first ever blog post would be about Citizen Kane or Casablanca or Tokyo Story or one of a myriad of cinematic classics. And yet I find myself writing about a European action  B-movie. Why? Because (a) it's fun (b) it's my blog and (c) I'll write about whatever the hell I want.



Statham plays Frank Martin, the transporter of the title who will transport anything for a price. He has, of course, a code. All anti-heroes in these types of film do and Frank's code consists of 3 cardinal rules:

1. Never change the deal
2. No names
3. Never look in the package

Of course, Frank breaks one of his own rules leading all sorts of nonsensical, people smuggling, building-exploding, airplane chasing, lorry-jumping and topless oil wrestling shenanigans and that's not something you'll see in Citizen Kane. (Orson Welles covered in oil, anyone?) The action scenes are well choreographed and, at a refreshing 92 mins, it zips along at a nice pace. I enjoyed it more than the most recent Bond effort

The Transporter is Ronseal film-making at its finest. It does exactly what it says on the tin and it makes no bones about it. It's not pretending to be something else. Statham knows his audience and gives them exactly what what they want. And it's hard not to cheer for that.