The images say "cinema"; the music says "television"

Rating: Null/10 (14 March 2003)

Style over substance? Not really. That's what happens when the director can't resist the temptation to include what he takes to be a cool-looking shot and in so doing makes nonsense of his own story or characters or themes. What we have here is style WITHOUT substance. There's no reason, all things considered, why the characters couldn't have been more involving as characters: there's nothing in the slick, zippy pacing, or the lovely golden photography, or the stylish French setting, or the cleverly conceived and choreographed fight scenes (for once, the word "edgy" actually applies; there's something exhilerating about the way the editing is ALMOST too fast to defeat its own purpose, but not quite) ... there's nothing in all of this that COMPELS the characters to be ciphers.
Partly for this reason it doesn't even matter very much that they are. The film's construction, down to the very rivets, is solid, so while a keener sense of everyone's motivation would be nice, the film doesn't really need this much to hold itself up. Remember, it does go beyond the call of duty in other respects. It opens with an exceptional car chase sequence, and the oil-wrestling scene (one of those things which everyone who's seen the movie is likely to talk about) shows how it's possible for the hero to plausibly defeat several bad guys at once in a novel way.
My main problem (which also doesn't matter very much in retrospect) was with the music. "The Transporter" may look and feel like a real movie, it may BE a real movie, but the music kicks in it sounds like a dodgy, charmless television cop show. This is not just an association of ideas. Music like this is inherently wrong for the big screen.