Phew! Too much time has passed since we saw a movie in the theater (The Tuxedo four weeks ago) rather than on the home screen. Just hasn’t been anything compeling enough to get us to come across with $6 or more. The price is too high for my pocketbook unless I really think it’s going to be good. Except for CinemaSave over in Milpitas, of course.
We both wanted to see The Transporter since seeing the trailer. This looked like a good European take on the Hollywood martial arts action flick. Luc Besson, who co-wrote and produced, is the man behind La Femme Nikita and The Professional, two terrific films. Cory Yuen is one of the top Hong Kong directors and this is his English language debut. Jason Statham, the star, looked very impressive in the trailer. And Ric Young is always good as a sleazy bad guy.
For the most part, the movie delivered. Faltered a bit with the plot resolution but that’s probably the most difficult element to pull off, and plot isn’t the reason for seeing an action film, is it? My big question was why the bad guys had two 18 wheelers when one would have been better for the plot. Statham, though, is a more refined version of Vin Diesel, the year’s other big new action star. Even though Transporter isn’t doing the box office of xXx, it is a launching pad for the Englishman and you should expect to see him again and again starting next year in caper flick The Italian Job with Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, and Edward Norton.
Qi Shu is the love interest here and this is her first big Hollywood role but she’s another Asian cinema star attempting to make it in our market. She’s pretty, sexy, of course, but also funny and a good actor; younger than Michelle Yeoh and older than Ziyi Zhang. Her character is the reason Statham’s Frank Marks gets into trouble, Shu has found out that her underworld father is trying to bring 400 Chinese to France as more or less slaves and wants to stop him.
Yuen and Besson open the film by showing the transporter doing his job: he picks up a gang that have robbed a bank and by way of some vicious driving, very well staged, gets them out of Nice. That’s the only major scene to show off driving skills but then we get to see some very creative martial arts fights. Plot is not ignored here, not in a Besson movie. Frank Marks has a life priot to the film, he once was a very good man whose innocence dissolved in bureaucratic politics; the events not only give him love but restore his true nature. This film brings what baseball calls the high, hard one, with energy to spare.
Recommended
BillSaysThis 
