Tongue in cheek and proud of it

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2002)

Took advantage of tightarse Tuesday and went and saw The Transporter this evening.
Interesting film - reminded me a lot of 'The Big Hit' - stylised action and fight scenes mixed in with a lot of tongue in cheek humour. The Transporter didn't go the extremes that 'The Big Hit' did but it was heading there. It even shared a similar theme of the tough guy falling for the Asian school-age girl.
The audience I saw the film with were sniggering at some of the more implausable things (the leap of the car onto the car trailer for one).
The fight scene in the bus depot with the slippery oil was inventive.
Can't help feeling that Jason Statham was a bit miscast for the role of the super efficient Transporter, the guy you hire when you have to get a package from point a to point b. Writer Luc Besson has a long history of projects concerning loners (La Femme Nikita, Leon, heck, even Joan of Arc) and Statham doesn't fully succeed in pulling off the role. He's great in the action sequences but anything else he seems to fall into familiar territory that his old mate Guy Ritchie trained him in for Lock Stock, and Snatch.
The final chase between the Transporter and container lorries did seem to steal a lot from the Bond flick 'Licence to Kill' (taking over lorries, jumping from planes onto backs of lorries etc), but it did add enough wrinkles to stamp its own signature on the scenes.
Good film though - great action sequences and inventive locations. 8 out of 10.