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The Transporter, 2002 |
 he
Transporter is
an entertaining, exciting, clever, fun, and completely ridiculous action
film. It's nothing special on the surface, just car chases, shoot outs,
and fight scenes, but it takes those familiar elements and makes them
more fun than usual with an above-average plot, decent acting, and a
number of extremely-creative and clever action scenes. It's not really
any good, but if you go in expecting action, fast driving, explosions,
fight scenes, a little bit of female skin, a lot of male skin, and can
turn off your brain at a popcorn thriller, you should enjoy it.To the scores: It's not really good, but it's far from bad, and it's fun if you keep the right frame of mind. The main character is "the transporter," just like the title. He's an ex special forces (from no particular country) living on the ocean in Monaco, and for fun and profit he transports things. Anything, no questions asked, no exceptions made. He has three rules. 1) Never change the deal. 2) No names. 3) Never open the package. The film opens with him picking up four armed men in masks, while alarms sound and police cars approach. He's fine with the situation; what he doesn't like is that the deal was changed. He contracted to take 3 men weighing no more than 250 kilos. Shouting ensues, the robbers threaten the Transporter's life, but the car won't start without the ignition code and finally the head robber blows away one of the three in the backseat, they dump the body, and they're off on wild chase through the picturesque streets of some unnamed European city. The next package is when things get interesting, since a flat tire leads to the discovery that the package is human sized and squirming, and from there complications ensue, and the plot thickens greatly, with the Transporter becoming a target for a small army of killers. There are driving stunts galore, there are faux martial arts fight scenes galore, there are shoot outs, and so on. What elevates this film above most cheesy action fests is the inventiveness of it. There are half a dozen long fight and stunt scenes, and almost all of them had at least a few things I'd never before seen in a movie. The most clever has the Transporter cornered by a dozen bad guys in an old garage. He's vastly outnumbered, but his shirt is off, and when one guy falls over a tub of old oil, the Transporter dumps out another one all over himself, coating the floor and his body with the slippery stuff. He then steps onto a bike, breaks off the pedals, and proceeds to fight with bike pedals stuck over his toes, giving him improvised metal cleats, while the bad guys are falling and slipping everywhere, and constantly grabbing at him and sliding off. In another scene he fights half a dozen guys on a public bus, using the seats for leverage and cover, the overhead bars to swing from or hang his legs over and fight upside down, the side rails to swing around and kick, and so on. There are improvised weapons (he battles several times with his own clothing as a tool), there are leg locks and submission holds to incapacitate several bad guys at once, there are wild escapes through the floor into the ocean, and much more. It's really quite a clever movie. There are even some good characters, from an understanding and sympathetic police detective to a quirky and self-asserting female hostage, and they mostly make up for the vast armies of one-note evil bad guys. The Transporter could have been an action classic with just a few improvements, most notably a plot that we might have gotten involved in, and a bad guy worthy of a final confrontation. The film has a great sense of humor, and it's very light and frivolous, but it's a bit too puffy overall, and the lack of any real compelling narrative or building climax keeps it from succeeding completely. It's meant to be popcorn, and it is, but it's got just enough serious elements to detract from the fun and remind you that this is the real world and things aren't always happy here. I'd usually approve of that, but with the rest of the plot so completely divorced from reality, it's jarring, rather than fortifying.
The Transporter DVD had no deleted scenes. It did however offer three extended length fight sequences. That's what the box said anyway. We watched them Sunday evening though, and as far as Malaya or I could tell they were 99% identical to the scenes in the film. Minus most of the sound effects, some of the snappy editing, and with lots of black frames with text like, "insert reaction of man in basement hearing gunshot" on them. Worthless to watch, in other words, though to be fair we did not do them with the commentary on, and perhaps that would have greatly elevated them. Or perhaps not. Honestly, you can skip all three of those entirely. Just FF to the fight scenes as they are in the actual film, if you want to see more simulated ass kicking. |
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