Transport Me Outta Here!

With The Transporter 2 coming out soon, I figured I had better watch the first one to see why the need for a second one. And frankly, I just don’t see it.

In short, there is nothing worthwhile in The Transporter (2002) that I can’t get in far superior movies.

Martial arts action scenes? They’re far better in any other martial arts film: try Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (1999) or Hero (2004). In The Transporter, they’re too long and not that interesting. And they don’t fit with the plot that well, either. They were probably one of the best things about the movie, but they just weren’t executed well enough to make them engaging. And then I saw that the DVD included extended fight scenes. I avoided them.

Car chases? It could have been good, but the editing was way too choppy. Go for The French Connection (1971) or Ronin (1998) instead.

Plot? Terrible. Simply one of the worst plots for an action movie I have seen in a long time. I like the idea of “the transporter,” and especially one who simply gets mixed up in something, but the inclusion of the girl as the love interest didn’t work at all. And the daughter/father thing was tacked on and terrible.

Jason Statham was the best thing about this movie, and yet even he couldn’t make it work. He’s a hard-ass, and I love his ability to never crack a smile, but it gets old after a while. Snatch (2001) is one of my favorite movies, however, and watching The Transporter made me think about why I liked him there and not here. Statham needs a foil, a buddy, a side-kick, someone who is goofy that he can play off of. In Snatch, there was the guy who bought the gun that didn’t work. Statham played the same basic stoic character, but he was there to play off the other bumbling idiot. It’s like Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis—the comic needs a straight man. But the straight man needs the comic, too! And here, there is no comic. Here, it’s simply straight man. And it makes for a really boring movie.

The Transporter gets a 3 out of 10 simply because the scenery is beautiful, and the action scenes were interesting for a brief while. You definitely won’t find me in the theater for the sequel, unless it’s to see a different film. I will probably get it from the library when it’s available, though. Even though the first one was stupid, I can’t pass up an action film.