Very feeble attempt at cool action movie

Rating: 2/10 (17 September 2005)

"The Transporter" was recommended to be my a colleague as one of the worst movies he had seen in recent years. While I usually take claims like this with a grain of salt, in this I think there was a lot of truth in it. "The Transporter" is an extremely lackluster, uninspired attempt at making a cool action movie, which manages to screw up in almost every aspect.
First, there's the story. It makes very little sense, and is so predictable and full of clichés that you can guess where it's going to go almost immediately. None of the characters, including the hero, are even remotely interesting, and everything is so rushed that there is no room for character development at all. You might as well watch some cardboard cut-outs.
Billed as an action comedy, "The Transporter" does indeed offer a lot of action, but only very little comedy. There are some things that are supposed to be funny, but, with two or three exceptions, they really aren't. Unless completely inept and cartoony bad guys are still supposed to be funny...
That leaves only the action. And while there certainly is a lot of it, and in spite of some impressive pyrotechnics, it's for the most part really dull. Apparently, the makers of this cinematic dud have gone to great length to make sure that the main characters comes across as really cool. The problem is that the things he does aren't even remotely possible in the real world, and are for the most part so exaggerated that they become unintentionally funny rather than cool. On top of that, the hero is so completely invulnerable that any tension there might have been is completely ruined.
And finally, there's the music, which is in one world awful. For some reason, just about every action sequence in the movie is accompanied by either some annoying hip hop song or some totally nondescript and monotonous rock number.
I wish I could find something positive to say, but there really isn't anything I can think of. "The Transporter" is an utterly hollow movie, with virtually no story and no characters to care about, full of action that is so exaggerated that it becomes simultaneously dull and unintentionally funny.
* out of ******