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TRANSPORTER 2
20th Century Fox, 2005
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Directed by Louis LeterrierCast
Jason Statham (Frank Martin)
Alessandro Gassman (Gianni)
Amber Valletta (Audrey Billings)
Kate Nauta (Lola)
Matthew Modine (Mr. Billings)
Jason Flemyng (Dimitri)
Keith David (Stappleton)
Hunter Clary (Jack Billings)
Shannon Briggs (Max)
François Berléand (Tarconi)
Admission: I haven’t seen Luc Besson’s The Transporter (2002), but the original film’s concept seems easy enough to grasp after a few minutes of watching this sequel. Our stubble-headed hero Frank Martin is a tough n’ taciturn ex-Special Op who now works independently as a “transporter.” If you need something moved from one place to another, and you perceive difficulties that involve heavy gunfire, you call Frank Martin. He can kick anybody’s ass until they wear it for a hat, but he’s got a soft edge and won’t walk on the dark side. This must be all you need to understand about The Transporter, because I thoroughly enjoyed Transporter 2 without any more data from the original except what I gleaned from its trailers. If you want action without a Michael Bay-induced headache and you don’t mind some comic-book outrageousness in your stunts, then get into your bullet-proof Audi and barrel recklessly down the freeway to the nearest theater. Be careful of the heavy gunfire.
The vague ‘transporting’ business must have hit a lull for Frank Martin (Jason Statham) since he has taken a job a chauffeur in Miami for the Billings family, shuttling their precocious cute son Jack (Hunter Clary) back and forth from appointments. Martin and his moppet charge have bonded, and as the Billings’s marriage seems on the brink of dissolving, Audrey Billings (Amber Valletta) starts thinking about doing some bonding with her hunky chauffeur herself. But Martin is too much of a professional for such involvements—and his professionalism gets the ultimate test when kidnappers grab Jack. 
Martin had vowed he would protect Jack from harm, no matter what, and Martin keeps his promises. Which means a whole lot of people are going to get their faces bashed in with blunt objects, large amounts of Miami property is going to go boom, and we’ll discover that a Audi can hurtle between buildings and smash through multiple cars without as so much getting a scratch on its black paint job.
The plot bears a remarkable resemblence to last year’s Denzel Washington vengeance thriller, Man on Fire. But Transporter 2 really has James Bond on the brain rather than an exploitation revenge flick. The child-in-jeopardy angle has less to do with the unfolding of the movie than you might sense from its opening; the abduction of Jack Billings serves as a set-up for assassination via biological warfare, which definitely shoves the film into the territory of 007 techno-spy thriller. The variety of the action sequences—a car chase, a boat chase, gun fights, an airplane in danger, martial arts fisticuffs—ensures that the almost nonstop violence never turns dull the way it often does in more standard action films. The James Bond formula for action is at work here: keep it fast, keep it colorful, keep it creative, and keep the focus on the charismatic hero and the outrageous henchman (or henchwoman, in this case). Transporter 2 even smoothly borrows the finale from Goldfinger for its own finale. Steal from only the best, I say.
As the leading man and deliverer of immense pain on all bad boys and girls, British actor Jason Statham projects a believable lethality. He mixes his violence with a sense of ruthless efficiency, and it helps to sell the crazy stunt work. Director Guy Ritchie originally discovered Statham when he was a model for French Connection clothiers and cast him in Ritchie’s breakthrough movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. This launched Statham, a former Olympic diver and black market salesman, on a film career that has managed to eclipse that of his mentor Ritchie. Ritchie has made two massive career mistakes: he married Madonna, and then filmed her in Swept Away. Statham has done neither of these things, and we should applaud him for it. We should also applaud his natural toughness, his ability to wear stylish clothes convincingly while cracking open ugly thugs’ heads, his athletic stunt work, and his Eastwoodian restraint in the dramatic scenes. If he keeps from marrying Madonna, he really will be a star.
The film’s other standout performance is the blonde goth hench-chick, Lola. The publicity department must have recognized the appeal of first-time movie actress Kate Nauta in the role, since they plastered her all over the promotional material and gave her a prominent spot on the poster which almost amounts to second-billing. Clothed in trashy lingerie, perched on scarlet stiletto-heel shoes, and wielding dual sub-machine guns, Lola is pretty damn hard to miss. In the classic Bond villainess mode, she gets her sexual kicks from her dastardly deeds. Kate Nauta doesn’t quite have the knack for dialogue scenes, but that makes no difference. Her strutting, posing, and sneering are entrancing, and Statham and her slugging and shooting it out with each other generates more sexual electricity than most actual love scenes in recent movies.
The action comes at a speedy clip, and it often reaches extravagant extremes where physics takes a complete holiday. The martial arts choreography feels less balletic than the usual Hong Kong-influenced fight action, which is a nice change. The people in this move really slug and smash each other with no pretense of looking stylish while doing it. Most of the hand-to-hand fighting falls into the VOFO style, a term I just coined that means “Violence Of Found Objects.” Martin grabs any item within reach and turns it into a deadly weapon: paint cans, fire extinguishers, tubing, canvas hose, watermelons, and beanie babies. Well, I made up the last one, but I’m sure the Transporter could make Beanie Babies objects of painful death if he happened across them while slugging it out with hired thugs. The use of weird objects has a touch of Jackie Chan to it, but without the slapstick comedy. Admittedly, it is funny watching a bad guy get the metal end of fire hose slammed into his crotch, but it’s more of an introspective kind of funny, ya’ know?
Introspective moments like that aside, Transporter 2 gives you the bang for your buck that so few action films have delivered this year. And Madonna got nowhere near it. What more recommendation do you need?