Transporter 2: if at first you don't succeed..

January 27th, 2006

I'm impressed, I'm really impressed. They cut out the bs plot knowing they can't write a good plot anyway and just focused on what they do well, which is action scenes. If you haven't caught onto what I'm talking about, it's The Transporter 2. The first Transporter movie had a great first 20 minutes, action packed driving, cool scenes. Then it completely faded. It wasn't good because it was trying to be good. The second installment from Luc Besson doesn't try so hard, it just knows what it's good at. First of all, what completely dominates and sells this movie is Jason Statham's character. This guy is so cool it makes me want to drive a car. I love the little details - the gloves, the super clean car, the suit, the haircut - it's all so well worked. What I mean about not trying too hard is that Besson is content with basing the whole story around Frank, because that's the only interesting concept of this story. There's plenty of funny physics, another thing I liked. You will see wild scenes of cars racing to an instant complete stop, impossible martial arts and so on. They don't even try making it look real, and why should they, it's much more entertaining this way. But to show you just how badly they fail when trying, the movie comes complete with an uber fake Italian bad guy. There isn't a thing about this guy that says Italian. His protege is a greatly annoying bimbo small arms expert, the only one besides Frank who has funny physics. This one parades around in her underwear shooting guns, but in bed with the big boss, though she's naked, she covers herself up. Roight. I used to think a good action movie needs a great bad guy, movies like 'Die Hard with a vengeance' have taught us that. But if you see this, all you expect to see is Frank and he's worth the hour and a half all on his own. From the cool black Audi to the supply of shirts and suits right in his trunk.

Oh that reminds me, the music is very cool at times, but it doesn't have the kind of long, powerful sequences like we'd like. Come to think of it, the plot is a bit like 'Man on fire', except it's not.

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4 Responses to "Transporter 2: if at first you don't succeed.."

  1. erik says:

    Hmm not sure if I'll try this one...

  2. numerodix says:

    You don't like James Bond, so this isn't for you I think. If Jason Statham was more witty and arrogant (his character probably wouldn't pull off the switch), I would actually consider him a great candidate for the new James Bond, instead of that Russian guy they hired.

  3. ash says:

    Russian guy? I'm pretty sure Daniel Craig (that's his name right? lemme check...) is English.
    I remember seeing the original Transporter and, like you, I didn't think much of it except for the action scenes.

  4. numerodix says:

    Yeah, I know he's English, I decided to keep calling him Russian because he looks like one of the Russian bad guys from the old James Bond movies.