The Transporter (2002)
Directed by Corey Yuen
Former Special Forces officer Frank Martin will deliver anything to anyone for the right price, and his no-questions-asked policy puts him in high demand. But when he realizes his latest cargo is alive, it sets in motion a dangerous chain of events. The bound and gagged Lai is being smuggled to France by a shady American businessman, and Frank works to save her as his own illegal activities are uncovered by a French detective.
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Where the film fails is in its resemblance, ironically, to Yuen's own work on The Bodyguard from Beijing (and even the awful Women on the Run) and in its uncomfortable similarity to John Woo's Hong Kong output--a cribbing owed as much to Yuen as producer Luc Besson, who has made it something of a closet industry in his action films to borrow liberally from The Killer and Hard-Boiled (and, in this particular instance, A Better Tomorrow II).
Which is not to say that it's up there with such Hong Kong classics as John Woo's "The Killer" or Jackie Chan's "Supercop."
Action fans be warned: The Transporter is little more than a cheap knock-off of John Woo’s The Killer.
Where the film fails is in its resemblance, ironically, to Yuen's own work on The Bodyguard from Beijing (and even the awful Women on the Run) and in its uncomfortable similarity to John Woo's Hong Kong output--a cribbing owed as much to Yuen as producer Luc Besson, who has made it something of a closet industry in his action films to borrow liberally from The Killer and Hard-Boiled (and, in this particular instance, A Better Tomorrow II).
Where as Woo's "Hard Target" was ill-served by a meandering, talky, sentimental script--and the burden of Jean Claude Van Damme--"The Transporter" has almost no script at all.
Trading off the same sub-Willis impersonation that he used to equally dubious effect in " The One ", Statham's latest attempt to recast himself as a hard-man action hero is more "Hudson Hawk" than " Die Hard ".
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Following the likes of Matt Damon ("The Bourne Identity") and John Cusack ("Grosse Pointe Blank") in surprising viewers by their realistic (or maybe even actually real) martial arts prowess, Statham is completely believable and is a great deal of fun to watch as the explosive transporter who delivers illegal goods for others for pay.
Writers Robert Mark Kamen and Luc Besson devise a film that combines both the action of a John Woo film and the intelligence of “La Femme Nikita”.
In the opening sequence of "The Transporter," actor Jason Statham elegantly edges into Luc Besson's hard-boiled world of "The Professional" and "La Femme Nikita."
The stylized mayhem of "The Transporter" has a good pedigree: Co-producer and co-writer Luc Besson put together a class act with Jet Li in "Kiss of the Dragon" and directed the action classics "La Femme Nikita" and "The Professional."
Amazingly, the film manages to work for those who aren't, and part of that's due to the effective script penned by Luc Besson (director of "The Professional" and "La Femme Nikita") and Robert Mark Kamen ("Kiss of the Dragon," "The Fifth Element").
What happens when you team up Hong Kong writer/producer/director/actor/fight choreographer Corey Yuen, known for countless Chinese action flicks dating back to the 1970s, French writer/producer/director Luc Besson, known for countless French movies like La Femme Nikita and Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc , and American writer/winemaker Robert Mark Kamen, known for the Karate Kid movies and a really kickass Cabernet Sauvignon?
That, anyway, is the proposition of French enfant terrible producer-writer Luc Besson ("La Femme Nikita"), who has surrounded Statham with a lot of tough adversaries and pretty European scenery in an expensive-looking kick-fest called "The Transporter."
As entertainingly exaggerated popcorn-chompers go, "The Transporter" ranks not far behind the all-time action-camp champ like Robert Rodriguez's south-of-the-border shoot-'em-up "Desperado" and John Carpenter's "Escape from New York" and "Big Trouble in Little China."
So, Frank’s temptation gets the best of him when hired by a smarmy American known only as “Wall Street” (see Rule #2) to make a delivery.
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August 22, 2005|Just in time to whet appetites for Transporter 2 (which, like the sequel to The Terminator , drops that pesky "the"), Fox reissues The Transporter on DVD in, Lord love us, a "Special Delivery Edition."
By the time Frank pulls a Raiders of the Lost Ark and fights bad guys while trying to hijack a tractor trailer, it's obvious what The Transporter has been doing right all along.