Reviewing “The Transporter” in 2002, I expressed doubt that some of the action sequences were possible.
“Transporter 2” sidesteps my complaint by containing action scenes that are even more impossible.
For example: Seeing the reflection of a bomb in a pool of liquid under his car, and knowing that the bad guys will not explode it while they’re standing right next to it, the hero races the car out of a garage and up an incline, spinning the car neatly through the air, so that it makes one complete rotation and the bomb is pulled off by a hook on a crane, exploding harmlessly as the car lands safely. Uh, huh.
I could observe that this is preposterous, but the fact is, I laughed aloud. Other stunts and computer-generated effects were equally impossible, as when Frank Martin (Jason Statham) flies a Jet Ski onto a highway and jumps from it into the back of a school bus. And when he uses a fire hose to immobilize a posse of killers. And when he escapes from a plane that has crashed into the ocean. And when he leads a police pursuit up the ramps of a parking garage and then crashes his car through a wall of the garage and it flies a couple of hundred feet through the air to a safe landing.
Either “Transporter 2” is wall-
to-wall with absurd action, or it’s not a sequel to “The Transporter.” And, in fact, the sequel is a better film than the original, as if writer-producer Luc Besson had a clearer idea of what he wanted to do (and didn’t want to do). The direction is by Louis Leterrier, whose “Unleashed,” released only three months ago, had that savage chemistry between a gangster (Bob Hoskins) and a fighter (Jet Li) he had raised like a dog.
That movie was also written and produced by Luc Besson, who is the hardest-working man in show business. Look him up on IMDb
.com if you want to feel tired just reading about his plans.
“Transporter 2” is better for a number of reasons, one of them that it has an ingenious plot that continues to reveal surprises and complications well into the third act. This is not simply a movie where the good guy chases the bad guys, but a movie where the story turns a lot trickier than we expected.
It begins with Frank Martin helping out a friend by filling in for a month as the driver and bodyguard for a cute kid named Jack (Hunter Clary), whose dad (Matthew Modine) heads the U.S. narcotics agency. The kid is kidnapped in a bizarre scheme involving a phony doctor, and then he’s recovered too quickly and without the ransom money being picked up, and it turns out the kidnapping – well, you’ll see for yourself.
Let me just observe that the methods of the kidnappers involves scientific ingenuity raised to evil genius. Not recently have I seen a movie with a better reason why the worst bad guy cannot be allowed to sink to the ocean floor along with the crashed airplane.
But not another word about that. Jason Statham is amusing as a man whose emotions are so well under control that he can barely be bothered to have any. He stars in several sequences in which he wipes out whole platoons of enemies.
Modine efficiently plays the role of the sniveling bureaucrat; Amber Valletta is effective as his long-suffering wife; and Kate Nauta plays Lola, a deadly vixen who considers herself dressed after she’s troweled on her eye makeup.
*** | “Transporter 2”
PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, sexual content, partial nudity and brief language|1 hour, 28 minutes|ACTION|Directed by Louis Leterrier, written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen; photography by Mitchell Amundsen; starring Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Katie Nauta, Matthew Modine, Jason Flemyng, Keith David, Hunter Clary|Opens today at area theaters.
