An ex-Special Forces soldier, Frank Martin (Statham) is a transporter. For a price, he will deliver questionable and dangerous packages from one place to another, no questions asked. He has a special skill-set, and he's made quite a career out of his driving ability. One mission goes wrong in a big way though when his employer, Wall Street (Matt Schulze), tries to take him out when Frank finds out he's transporting a person, a young woman named Lai (Qi Shu). He has no idea what he's stumbled into and doesn't even want to know. All Frank's looking for? Survive, and get out alive. As the transporter runs for his life, a French police inspector, Tarconi (Francois Berleand), follows the evidence and gets closer and closer to getting his hands on Frank.
You know what surprised me about this movie? And before you guess, remember I'm a fan of Jason Statham and love a good action movie. Can't figure it out? I absolutely hated this movie. Not a mild dislike or bored watching it...I hated it. Little interest in anything going on, atrociously bad choices in soundtrack, a general feel of Euro-trash entertainment mixed with Hong Kong action, and action that is so over-choreographed I couldn't stand it. Oh, okay, it wasn't all bad. I enjoyed the first 20 minutes, and Statham is cool so there's that.
There's no way this next statement is going to come out the right way, but here goes anyways. Where a movie is made has an impact on the feel, the style, the look of a movie. Not all European movies -- mostly the bad, real bad ones -- have this overdone, cheesy, ridiculously exaggerated feel and look to them. The Transporter (from French writer Luc Besson and Hong Kong director Corey Yuen) unfortunately does. The bad guys are so out of this world stupid and evil, they cease to be bad guys. They're comedically bad. Maybe the biggest strike against 'Transporter' is the soundtrack though, an off the wall mix of Euro-pop and rap/hip-hop songs thrown in with some themes that sound like they would be more at home in a softcore porno. It wouldn't be bad in small doses, but the score from Stanley Clarke never stops to take a breath. A score that ruins a movie, and that's saying something.
Looking for a saving grace, you can find it in Jason Statham. Check that, saving grace isn't the right choice. Statham doesn't save the movie, but he keeps it passably watchable. Now there is a ringing endorsement for you. His Frank Martin character somewhat...just a bit...a tiny bit....resembles Alain Delon's hitman in Le Samourai. It is a minimalist part; a superbly trained and skilled operator who lives a simple life. He's impeccably good at what he does with no rivals. Frank lives by a few easy rules. 1. Can't change the deal. 2. No names. 3. Never look at the package. We find out little about Frank, and we don't need to know much. I like Statham as an action star and as an actor, and in a lost movie, he manages to make something worthwhile.
As for the acting department, Statham is all The Transporter has going for it. I don't know if I've ever seen worse "performances." Playing the troubled Lai, Qi Shu delivers one of the worst, most incredibly annoying performances I've ever seen. There's a damsel in distress, and there's Lai, putting the damsel idea a long ways back in the rearview. From the Fast and the Furious movies, I didn't think Schulze was much of an actor anyways, and he confirms that here. He sneers and leers, glares and "intimidates" as Wall Street. Why Wall Street? Who the hell knows. Ric Young -- sporting the most insanely obvious wig/toupee I've ever seen -- is hilariously bad as Mr. Kwai, Lai's father with his hand in human and slave trafficking.
What people keep coming back to with the Transporter movies -- two sequels have been released since 2002 -- is the action. I thought that might save things a bit, especially after the opening car chase/getaway in Nice after a bank robbery. It serves as a perfect example of how to do a car chase, keeping it entertaining and allowing the viewer to keep up. It goes downhill after the opening sequence. There are fake action scenes, and then there's fake. Is it possible for a fight scene to be over choreographed? I don't need a scene to be realistic (far from it), but watching Frank battle countless waves of henchmen quickly becomes tedious. They're too polished, too choreographed. It's a shame right on through to the end, a high-speed chase on a mountain road that should have been much, much cooler.
It is hard to film a movie in Europe -- Nice, Marseilles, Paris -- and mess that up. The movie looks great because of that. Statham's character has potential like so much else in the movie. I'm just curious enough to see if Transporter 2 or 3 is even a little bit better because this one was that bad. Statham's scenes with Bertreand's Inspector are one of the few bright spots, actual conversation between two characters, two men who aren't admitting everything they know. Not enough by a long shot to save this dud. Bad, bad and bad.
The Transporter <---trailer (2002): */****
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