'Transporter 2' gets stuck inaction overkill mode

Friday, September 2, 2005

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Fans of the original "The Transporter," of which I count myself one, will be the first to admit that it's hardly a thinking man's action classic. That was part of the charm: It was a glorified drive-in thriller updated for the 21st century, and its simple, unpretentious storyline and down-to-earth effects made it a refreshing break from the bloated overkill of Hollywood action spectacles.

MOVIE REVIEW

TRANSPORTER 2

DIRECTOR: Louis Leterrier

CAST: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Katie Nauta

RUNNING TIME: 88 minutes

RATING: PG-13 intense sequences of violent action, sexual content, partial nudity and brief language

GRADE: C

LINKS/TRAILERS
· Official site

PHOTO GALLERY

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For the sequel, producer/co-writer Luc Besson transports his steely, gravel-voiced hero, Frank Martin (Jason Statham), an outlaw driver with an inflexible code of ethics, from France to Miami, and all those American action excesses seep right in.

At first glance, "Transporter 2" feels like a rehash of "Man on Fire." Frank, chauffeur to the adorable son of an American drug czar, makes it his mission to rescue the boy from kidnappers. But the film soon reveals its own preposterous story, involving an international assassin (a decadently dull Alessandro Gassman), a deadly virus and a trigger-happy hit woman (Katie Nauta) who works in lingerie.

Statham's terse, cool-headed Frank makes a memorable action hero. His diver's body is a locked-muscle pile driver throwing kicks and punches, and director Louis Leterrier and choreographer Cory Yuen (who collaborated on the original) showcase his talents nicely in slick, staccato martial-arts battles and scrape-and-screech car chases.

The rest of the film is a compendium of pulp dialogue and B-movie plot twists that Leterrier can't zoom through fast enough. He can't rouse his cast into delivering anything resembling a performance and he gives up pretending the plot makes any sense. He even sacrifices the film's distinctive physical stunt work for computer-enhanced stretches of absurd action overkill. When the spectacle turns ridiculous, the movie just becomes another big-screen video game.