 I hate to be Late |
| Review Date: March 31, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Gunner, Bethlehem,Georgia |
Transporter 2 DVD
In this sequel to The Transporter Jason Stratham is in Miami working as a chauffer/bodyguard for a wealthy family who springs into action when the young son of his client is kidnapped. The movie is full of high action car chases and stunts. Set in the beautiful Miami, Florida area, so again if you don't enjoy high action movies, just sit back and enjoy the view.
Highly recommended for fans of Jason Stratham , James Bond movies, and high action movies, especially car chases.
Gunner March, 2008
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"You really want to play superhero, don't you?"
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| Review Date: September 8, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Strategos, In Space above Planet Earth |
This is it. The ultimate super-cool/martial-arts/drama/action-fest. This is the summer movies you have been waiting for (and wonder why it came out so late in the year with so little fan-fare). From the mind that brought you The Fifth Element came The Transporter, and now all your sequel wishes are finally fulfilled.
Who is The Transporter?
The Transporter is the ultimate anti-hero of modern movies in the classic sense (sorry Batman fans). He doesn't play by the rules, he makes his own. He's brooding, expressionless most of the time, and borderline personality-less. He drives sports-cars with precision instead of reckless abandon, dresses in a smart-looking suit, and transports all kinds of unsavory goods for the right price. Yet somehow, this man with seemingly no scruples or morals when it comes to dealing with the criminal element again and again finds himself getting involved in saving innocents from BAD people. Like Roger Smith from the Big O (anime), or John Steed from the Avengers (television), he'd rather live a quiet life of comfort and deal with people in a professional manner than have things get stirred up (it would unstraighten his tie and stain his upholstery), but in a world gone mad a ronin samurai (a knight with no master/champion in search of a lady to defend) is probably the best you could ever hope for. Of course that just describes who HE is...
The Job
The plot is simple. Our slick/code-of-honor-driven/cooler-than-ice protagonist Frank Martina finally finds himself a nice job and a quiet life shuttling a kid back and forth for his rich parents (and a jerk of a father who's a government big-wig). Then some bad guys try to inject something in the kid when he goes in for a medical check-up. Our hero saves the kid, only to have to surrender him to the thugs when they give him no choice (laser-sight snipers with armor-piercing bullets have a bead on the kid). He delivers the kid to the bad guys, and gets away. He investigates the scene of the crime, finds a link to one of the thugs, tracks him down, convinces him (the criminal) that he's injected with the same stuff the kid was, chases the guy into a med lab where they have an antidote, gets the antidote, gives it to the mom, tells the mom that the bad guys are trying to kill the father and everyone at a conference by infecting them (they have the kid back at this point), and then finds and captures the head bad guy who has the last of the antidote inside of himself. Simple. R I G H T.
The Action
From the very start of the movie we know there is going to be action (some street thugs make FOOLS of themselves when they try to car-jack him {and should have taken the hint when he told them to let him take off his jacket before he beat the stuffing out of them}), and the action only gets better from there. When he finds out there's something up at the doctor's office, it leads to a crazy bullet-dodge fest that leads up to him using an oxygen tank as a missile. When he has to take the kid to the bad guys to save his life it involves a crazy car chase that includes driving the car off the top floor of a parking garage and into another building, then off that and onto the street. When the kid is dropped off a bomb is attached to the car which is removed at high speed by use of a giant crane-hook and rolling the car. When the antidote is finally within grasp a scientist throws it out the window (and says my favorite line in the movie). What does our hero do? He jumps after it of course (straight out the window from a few stories up)! Of course he's right in the middle of a road and so has to leap straight into the air between two oncoming cars (my favorite stunt in the movie)! Whoa. And that doesn't even mention the action scene of the chase to the med lab wherein our hero chases a bus on a wave-runner, and runs straight up the front of a truck onto a bridge.
I could go on and on about the action in this movie. The Lamborghini/airplane chase, the out-of-control-plane fight scene, the garage fight where the only one unarmed is Frank, the countless times he has to disarm cops who try to apprehend or shoot him, ect, ect. The point is obvious though. This movie is filled with slick, smooth, cool, CRAZY action sequences. Our hero's action involves medical equipment, watermelons (for boxing gloves), a fire hose, handcuffs, and more. Every one is wildly inventive and keeps you on the edge of your seat (thanks to the wonderful fight scene choreography by Corey Yuen). Personally I think Frank's nemesis (not the crazy evil guy with the accent, the girl who walks around half naked with the two huge guns) is very cool. You don't quite know what to make of her, except that she's totally insane, and very unpredictable. I really don't know whether this super-thin, never-fully-dressed, Millia Jovanovich looking/sounding chick is more cool/hot/disgusting/insane/bizzare. Some things you just have to see for yourself. And there are so many fight scenes/chase scenes that I actually found that a few days after I saw the movie I had forgotten a few really cool scenes because there were so many to choose from that I couldn't remember them all. Makes me want to see it again to refresh my memory...
Statham Shines Again
What really makes this movie great though is still the character and what he represents. Genuinely I haven't seen this kind of character interaction and anti-hero characterization in a long time. There's scenes between Frank and the kid's mom where she is clearly trying to get close to him but he plays it totally cool. It's not that he doesn't like her. He does. And a family is probably what he wants more than anything. But he's not the kind of guy who breaks up a family. She puts her arms around him and he starts to do the same, then pulls back. He has honor, there are certain things he just will not do. And then there's that scene at the end of the movie where he goes to see the mother in the hospital and just walks away when he sees that the couple is back together (so clique in other movies, so classic here). That's just great stuff.
Throughout the whole movie we get a great feel for Statham's character. When the crazed female assassin starts flirting with him in the extreme the look on his face is priceless (YUCK!). When he walks the trunk of his car in the rain, torn up and covered in various staining substances, we see him reach not for the all the crazy weapons, but for a clean suit of clothes (pressed and plastic wrapped). The understated way that Statham acts (or doesn't act depending on your perspective) makes him the ultimate cool. Sorry The Rock, sorry Vin Diesel, and sorry everyone else. This guy is just WAY cooler. How many action heroes can wear a suit and tie in an action movie and make it look more like a super-hero than a businessman (James Bond has really disappointed me in recent years)? And yet this same guy cares about a promise he made to a child and taught that child to play guessing games on the way home from school.
Comic Relief
And of course we have the French police officer from the first movie who comes to visit our hero on his vacation. He provides some great comic relief, but never becomes irritating superfluous. When he gets arrested and detained for the duration of his vacation (and the movie it's hilarious {as he starts cooking for the Federal Investigators and finds various ways of deceiving them into not knowing that he's talking to the man they're looking for on his cell-phone), but he also serves a needed function. From inside the police buildings he repeated taps into the police computer networks to retrieve the data that our hero needs to proceed.
In the End
This movie doesn't focus on the unnecessary. Everything is kept taught and tight for the duration and there's plenty to make action fans and teenage guys giddy. The movie's precision-driving mythos is so cool people keep quoting the Transporter's rules (Rule #1:Respect the Car). The music is great. The side characters are likable (except maybe for the dad) and the main characters are cool (let's face it, you GOTTA have a cool hero and cool villains or the movie just doesn't work). The action is way over-the-top (kind of like the cars which just exploded on impact in the first movie), and reality-driven movie watchers will no doubt roll their eyes at the IMPOSSIBLE things that happen on-screen.
In the end though this movie contains some of the best dialog, scene direction, camera use, special effects, action sequences, car chases, friendship, romance, and just plain old HEROICS I have seen in a long, long time. And more importantly, this movie is, is fun, fun fun! When the last line leaves way for a sequel you can't help but smile. Now if only I could have my wish of a Driver vs. Transporter movie (you know, with Clive Owen, The Driver from those awesome BMV commercials). But that's a discussion for another time. Right now I feel the need to dress up, prep my ride, buckle up, and transport some goods... |
This movie is completely ridiculous.
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| Review Date: November 24, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Bricolage, New York |
... and that's why it's so good.
Let's see:
1) A script only a moron can write.
2) The story is... missing.
3) Most of the time something completely bizarre is happening.
4) The action sequences are beyond unrealistic.
5) It's short.
So there you have it. Yes, those are actually the reasons this movie rocks. It's just like I wanted it to be. This is an action B-movie classic.
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Transporter 2...buy it
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| Review Date: August 25, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Max Mumforce, Modesto CA |
| I own the original as well as the sequel and if they ever make a Transporter 3 I will buy it. The fight scenes in this movie rock. The story is just ok, but who buys this kind of movie for the story anyway? The driving is cool, but where the star of these movies shines is in the fight scenes. Very well choregraphed, with things I have not seen in other movies ( and I have seen a LOT of martial art movies ). Make no mistake, this guy is for real, he is no Steven Segal ( complete fake ) he really knows his stuff. |
Exciting and Exhilirating Film
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| Review Date: February 1, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Leonard Mayer, Bronx, New York |
| I thought the film was more exciting than any James Bond film. The action, the suspense of what would happen next, and the background scenery of Miami is a pleasant, amusing, and arousing adventure. The upbeat and fast action sequences kept me excited. All films are fantasy and unrealistic but this one is better than any James Bond movie in terms of the shifts in scenery kept you from being bored. I thought this more exciting than the first Transporter because fighting choreography alone can be boring but when combined with changes in scenery, you find yourself transported to different situations that keep you from being bored by redundant fighting sequences. |
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