I found my old
Transporter 2 movie review while looking for buried Word files after my computer crashed recently. This is one of the first reviews I did after I made up my "Five Star Rating" system. I include it here next to my review of
Transporter 3 which I saw on Thanksgiving this year but unfortunately has taken till now to post. More old reviews are on their way this week.
Transporter 2 (two and a half stars total) Jason Statham's
Transporter (2002) movies are like Jackie Chan's cop movies, except the hero isn't as little or goofy. For the longest time, the martial arts genre was only getting goofier with the likes of JCVD in
Street Fighter (1994) and Wesley Snipes in
Blade (1998). That's not to say that The
Transporter 2 (2005) is not silly, it just doesn't have any Nazis or magical relics, as in
Bulletproof Monk (2003). What it does have is Colombian bio-terrorists. But relevance and absurdity aside, it's written by Luc Besson of the original
La Femme Nikita (1990) and
The Fifth Element (1997) fame and it plays like European art cinema. The people who complain that this movie is too unrealistic are totally missing the point. My favorite aspect is the comic book action: he does skateboarding tricks with his car (see also 2005's
Herbie Fully Loaded) without damaging it, never hurts himself, jumps out of high rise windows and lands on his feet. My qualms are with the oversaturated lighting, most of the costumes, and the old French guy for supposed comic relief. The hybrid classical and techno score is nowhere near
The Saint (1997) or
The Matrix (1999), but then nobody goes to action flicks for the music. (2 September 2005)
We learn from
Scream 3 (2000) that the first movie in a series establishes the rules, the second one breaks them, and in the third there are no rules. This same narrative formula is used in
The Transporter 3 (one and a half stars) with the title character's rules for the jobs he takes. As in the first two movies, there is plenty of gorgeous European highway scenery and a crisis taken from international news headlines, but that's all that survives in this steadily worsening series. Gone are the fight scenes where it's obvious that Jason Statham is doing his own stunts, replaced by tiny, chopped-up bits of music video-style editing where it's not obvious who's doing what or how. I still prefer this to the slow-motion fight scenes of
Hard Boiled (1992) and
Gladiator (2000), unpopular as my opinion may be. If you're looking for action with an international flare and you've already seen
Quantum of Solace (2008), may I recommend the French parkour in
District B13 (2004)? Anyway, back to
The Transporter 3 (2008), there's only way to put this - the girl ruins the movie. Her accent and dialogue is so unbelievable that I had to check if she was overcompensating for not really being Russian. When I saw that her real name is Natalya Rudakova, it made it all the more unbelievable that she was given as many lines as she was during the overlong seduction scene her English being what it was. Finally, somewhere during the series, the music stopped being fun. Go back and take notes on the sounds in the first movie, which was and will continue to be the best.
Transporter 2 (two and a half stars total) Jason Statham's Transporter (2002) movies are like Jackie Chan's cop movies, except the hero isn't as little or goofy. For the longest time, the martial arts genre was only getting goofier with the likes of JCVD in Street Fighter (1994) and Wesley Snipes in Blade (1998). That's not to say that The Transporter 2 (2005) is not silly, it just doesn't have any Nazis or magical relics, as in Bulletproof Monk (2003). What it does have is Colombian bio-terrorists. But relevance and absurdity aside, it's written by Luc Besson of the original La Femme Nikita (1990) and The Fifth Element (1997) fame and it plays like European art cinema. The people who complain that this movie is too unrealistic are totally missing the point. My favorite aspect is the comic book action: he does skateboarding tricks with his car (see also 2005's Herbie Fully Loaded) without damaging it, never hurts himself, jumps out of high rise windows and lands on his feet. My qualms are with the oversaturated lighting, most of the costumes, and the old French guy for supposed comic relief. The hybrid classical and techno score is nowhere near The Saint (1997) or The Matrix (1999), but then nobody goes to action flicks for the music. (2 September 2005)
We learn from Scream 3 (2000) that the first movie in a series establishes the rules, the second one breaks them, and in the third there are no rules. This same narrative formula is used in The Transporter 3 (one and a half stars) with the title character's rules for the jobs he takes. As in the first two movies, there is plenty of gorgeous European highway scenery and a crisis taken from international news headlines, but that's all that survives in this steadily worsening series. Gone are the fight scenes where it's obvious that Jason Statham is doing his own stunts, replaced by tiny, chopped-up bits of music video-style editing where it's not obvious who's doing what or how. I still prefer this to the slow-motion fight scenes of Hard Boiled (1992) and Gladiator (2000), unpopular as my opinion may be. If you're looking for action with an international flare and you've already seen Quantum of Solace (2008), may I recommend the French parkour in District B13 (2004)? Anyway, back to The Transporter 3 (2008), there's only way to put this - the girl ruins the movie. Her accent and dialogue is so unbelievable that I had to check if she was overcompensating for not really being Russian. When I saw that her real name is Natalya Rudakova, it made it all the more unbelievable that she was given as many lines as she was during the overlong seduction scene her English being what it was. Finally, somewhere during the series, the music stopped being fun. Go back and take notes on the sounds in the first movie, which was and will continue to be the best.
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