Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, The One: All these movies have on thing in common; they are all films with Jason Statham in the cast. They also share another common denominator; none of them give even a hint to how much ass this man can kick on screen! If you don’t know the name Jason Statham then pay attention and commit it to memory because you soon will. He has both acting chops and the ability to play action hero. As far as The Transporter goes as a film it’s a mixed bag, but definitely an entertaining one.
Written by Luc Besson the film follows an ex-special forces soldier (Statham) who lives along the Mediterranean and hires himself out as a mercenary “transporter”. And thus you understand the reasoning behind the title. Or hero, the transporter, is good, very good at his job. Going into jobs he has a few simple rules. The first rule is this: never open the package. Obviously since this is a movie we know at some point he’s going to break this rule. Otherwise there would be no story. So our boy gets contracted to move a package from one city to another. As he is cruising along in his black BMW 735 he realizes the package is moving and, against his better judgment, as predicted breaks the all-important rule. He opens the package and thus our story truly begins. I’m not going to say what is in the package because why ruin it for those of you who haven’t seen it, or any of the commercials out there.
Performance wise the acting is decent. Statham is excellent and really goes along way to proving that he could anchor a very large Hollywood film without even breaking a sweat. Beyond his performance though there really isn’t much worth shouting about. Qi Shu does an admirable job as Lai. The rest of the cast is fair and in a few cases give pretty bad performances.
This, of course, may not be entirely the fault of the actors. It is quite possible that the writing is to blame. After all Luc Besson seem to have a history of moments of brilliance surrounded by scripts and stories that are mediocre efforts. This time out the writing was a better than mediocre, but not great by any means. The tale seems a bit rehashed and not very inspired. Despite that though the writers manage to at least make the film and story entertaining.
Overall, The Transporter is by far not the worst film to debut this year. Neither is it the greatest piece presented to us. It falls somewhere in the middle, as the majority of films seem to do lately. The story is entertaining, if not a bit uninspired. The action sequences are top notch and really one of the nest parts of the film. Hands down though, the jewel of this film is the performance of Jason Statham in the titular role. Keep an eye on him folks he is going place. If you like good solid action movies with a little romance thrown in for good show then this is your cup of tea.
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