THE TRANSPORTER

By: Abbie Bernstein
Date: Friday, October 11, 2002

Odds are good that THE TRANSPORTER will do much better in venues where audiences are accustomed to shrugging off screwy plots as disposable packaging for a lot of very impressive kick-ass setpieces. Director Corey Yuen provides his European cast with a framework for doing plenty of Hong Kong-style fighting. It looks terrific and Yuen stages the plentiful and varied combat sequences with wit and stamina. However, the connective baggage here is enough to weigh down the highest-flying kicks.

Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is a former soldier (the press notes mention British Special Forces, though it never seems to come up in the dialogue) who now resides in France, making a very good living as a transporter. He will take anyone or anything anywhere, no questions asked and no judgments made, for a price. He is strict about making sure his clients follow his rules, a point made in the very first scene, where he prompts a bank robber to shoot one of his fellow bandits in order to lighten the load in Frank's car. This is a bold narrative move upfront that indicates THE TRANSPORTER is either going to be moody and morally complex or so tone-deaf that it's going to cheerfully present its protagonist as a lone knight in a world gone wrong, even though he's just called for the murder of someone he doesn't know. Complexity does not win out. The subsequent car chase shows that Yuen knows how to stage fantastic vehicular stunts but doesn't handle his supporting cast well they overreact so cartoonishly that they undercut the automotive thrills and doesn't have much of a handle on his overall tone.

Frank's insistence

on lack of involvement with the consequences of his work (contrary to what's indicated in the trailer) actually doesn't get much of a workout when he discovers that his latest cargo is a live young woman (Shu Qi) in a zippered body bag in the trunk. Frank's notion of humanity is to let her out to urinate and cut a slit in her gag so she can sip juice through a straw before zipping her back in. Along the way, he also knocks a pair of cops unconscious (they've seen too much) and tosses them in after the captive. However, when Wall Street (Matt Schulze), Frank's employer on this job, ascertains that Frank has broken one of his own rules and looked at the "package," Frank's car blows up (with the cops still in the trunk). Frank, now irked, does some damage of his own to Wall Street's home and flunkies. Lai, the girl from the car, stows away in Frank's new vehicle, and Frank winds up involved in a vendetta with Wall Street and in Lai's problems.

Screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen give us some good switcheroos regarding Lai's plight and Qi is very charming in a role that isn't quite as insane as it first appears (which isn't to say that it makes total sense, either). However, they provide minimal personality and motivation for most of the other characters, serving neither plot (which hinges on what should be an intensely agonizing conflict of loyalties) nor cast. Statham, the tremendously personable lead in LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH, is called on to be so stoic and Mid-Atlantic here that it's a great tribute to his ability that any individuality and emotion registers at all. When he's allowed to, he conveys exasperation well, but the situations are so jaw-droppingly scripted that it's hard to imagine how the character even ought to react.

THE TRANSPORTER proves that its makers have brilliant skills in some areas and are clueless in others. Viewers who actually want their action movies to resemble video games without being cluttered up by annoyances like coherence, logic and characterization will be delighted with all but the exposition sequences. Other audiences who want a bit of movie to go with their action will be disappointed.

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