Director Corey Yuen’s “The Transporter” introduces Jason Statham (“Snatch”), survivor of two Guy Ritchie films, as a credible–relatively speaking–action star. He is given just enough dialogue to show he can, in fact, act, but not so much that the audience is forced to waste energy thinking.
More importantly, he is given ample opportunity to show off his upper-body development, including a brilliantly contrived scene in which he actually removes his shirt while fighting. Beware: This is the stuff franchises are made of.
The film opens with a self-contained introductory sequence (a la “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and every Bond film) as a prelude to the actual story, such as it is. Our hero, Frank Martin (Statham), is presented as an amoral mercenary vehicular specialist whose discretion and driving skills make him a desirable contract employee for bank robbers and other well-off criminals along the French Riviera.
What is striking about the opening chase is not its commonplace unbelievability, but rather the contradictions it establishes. Frank spends a great deal of time discussing how the weight of his cargo may affect his escape maneuvers, while disregarding the fact that the length of this discussion gives the police plenty of time to arrive on the scene.
He also shows concern for vomit on his leather seats, but not with a haphazardly inflicted fatal gunshot wound to the head of one of his backseat passengers. He’s our hero, but doesn’t worry much about leading police on a destructive chase through busy streets.
Throughout the movie, the audience is expected to accept the emotionless Martin as the good guy in spite of his disregard for legality and morality. Sappy music and, with newcomer Shu Qi, the most unlikely but unavoidable romance this side of “As Good as it Gets,” are supposed to endear him to us. The fact that he ultimately chooses good over bad allows us, just as it allows his nemesis-turned-ally Detective Tarconi (French actor Francois Berleand), to overlook a few random deaths and explosions.
Oh, yes . . . explosions. Like any action flick, that’s the name of the game. And oh, do they blow stuff up, sometimes just for the fun of showing stuff blowing up. Why fire one missile into Martin’s batcave-on-the-Riviera house when three increasingly devastating missiles will do?
And, typically, it seems everyone in this movie has plenty of guns from which to choose, except at such time as hand-to-hand combat is more appealing. The well-equipped bad guys are suddenly street thugs with pipes and clubs. And, of course, our Euro-kung-fu superhero is more than a match for them, even prolonging the more-climactic fights at the expense of potential chase scenes, which, after all, can easily be continued the next day, even if it means commandeering a crop-duster.
Not a single action cliché is missed, from non-brain-damage-causing whacks on the head to render someone unconscious, to nameless henchmen who can’t hit a target with automatic weapons, to bad guys who fail to kill the hero when they’ve got him with a gun to his head, to the stereotypically slimy villain (Matt Schulze, “Blade II”). And of course there are contrivances and gaping plot holes galore.
It is a fine example of today’s action film, American despite strong European and Hong Kong influences. All that distinguishes “The Transporter” from other action films are its wasteful use of rope and menacing use of the word “containers.” (Human beings are being transported ? “in containers!”)
Nonetheless, “The Transporter” delivers on its promise as a fast-paced, simple-minded action flick. It is pure escapist entertainment, and hardcore action fans will overlook the film’s considerable lackings.
Grade: B/C
