Showbits

When the first Transporter film was released in 2002, it didn't even register on my radar. The first I'd heard of it was the 2005 release of Transporter 2, which I assumed was the first domestic sequel in some foreign series. (Hey, it happens.) It didn't seem very high-brow, so I dismissed it as a flash in the pan. But a recent Transporter 3 trailer revealed the franchise to have a longer tail than I expected. More important, it actually looked like a fun film I'd want to see. Time at last to go back to the beginning and watch the original Transporter

Frank Martin (played by Jason Statham) is a retired soldier living in southern France, where he makes an underground living as a transporter — a courier with no questions asked. When his curiosity leads him to break Rule #3 — "Never open the package" — he finds himself running from the mob while trying to do what's right… as long as it doesn't get him killed.

"What have you gotten me into now?"

It's that sense of morality that let me get behind The Transporter as a fun action flick. The main character finds bliss in ignorance, but like Firefly's Mal, when he knows something wicked is going down, he does his best to minimize it. We never see Martin kill anyone, which is a surprise to even his opponents, who often expect a fatal blow only to find themselves still breathing. We can presume some of his victims die off-screen, but it's never explicitly shown. I didn't need to check the MPAA rating to deduce it was PG-13.

The rating doesn't slow down some great action sequences. There are several hand-to-hand combat sequences that occur in diverse settings such as a passenger bus, an oil slick, and among cargo containers. Where Jackie Chan uses props as comical effects, Martin uses them for deadly ones. There's some great choreography present that doesn't resort to the annoying trend toward quick and dizzying cuts and angles. There's more green screen than there is CGI, and what little CGI is noticeable is more for aesthetics than function.

The Transporter is nothing new; like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in The Rundown, Martin is a merc who gets too close to his target. But despite being written by Luc Besson of The Fifth Element, it's mindless fun with plenty of action and a solid performance by Jason Statham that has me looking forward to the sequels.

Tags: Corey Yuen, Frank Martin, Jason Statham, Louis Leterrier, Luc Besson, Shu Qi, The Transporter, transporter

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