The Transporter

Starring Jason Statham, Shu Qi and Francois Berleand
Screenplay by Luc Besson with Robert Mark Kamen
Directed by Cory Yuen
website: www.transportermovie.com

IN SHORT: been there done that. [Rated PG-13 for Violence and Implied Sexuality. 100 minutes]

And there comes a time, usually called Summer, in which movie plots take second place to outrageous stunts, heroes spouting easily quotable out of the side of the mouth quips, sexy girls and more stunts. Remove the bit about quotes, for The Transporter is a made in France but spoken in English phonetics piecemeal production, and flip a coin as to the sexiness of the co-star and you have a movie in which each stunt succesfully out-wows its predecessor. It is a movie which doesn't give us any reason at all to give a damn about either its star, a European mob guy named Frank Martin (Jason Statham) whose job is to get packages from one place to another, no questions asked, or the package that he was not supposed to open, but did. Said package contains kidnap victim Lai (Shu Qi) who is supposed to meet a fate worse than death at the hands of American mobster Wall Street (Matt Schulze). Lai has got to die because she is about to spill the beans about her father's (Ric Young) immigrant smuggling operation. Unfortunately for Wall Street, he has decided to take the transporter out of the picture as well.Thus the good and bad lines are drawn and, of course, you know who falls in love with you know what.

Well, she is a "package, after all...

While Police Inspector Tarconi (Francçois Berléand) patiently waits to lower the boom on the "villain" he respects as an equal oppposite -- he serves the guy coffee while in jail, folks -- the transporter is making his way (both out of jail) and up through the ranks of two bit mobsters, to get his revenge. He does so in a gentlemanly manner, for though bullets do fly, blood doesn't flow like river water. The money shots are all in the car stunts, all but one spectacular in and of their own right. The Transporter would be a fine place to stash a teen who didn't care about much else than stunts. As an action film for grown ups, it ain't worth the trip to the cinema.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to The Transporter, he would have paid . . .

$4.00

watch it on teevee, sound up to eleven.

	Click to buy films by Cory Yuen
	Click to buy films by Luc Besson

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