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.