The Transporter-Didn't move me.

Rating: 3/10 (18 January 2007)

I loved Statham in Snatch, I thought he was inspirational, and pulled off the part with real conviction. The voice over throughout only adds to your involvement with his character and sympathy to his plight.
Here however I felt that Statham was totally misdirected. He seemed straight jacketed in the part and the lines he was given further tied him down. His screen presence is fantastic and the film on paper should have been great. The opening car chase (although ridden with more continuity errors than many entire films) was reminiscent of Frankenheimer, even more so with the French location. The story however as it unfolded I felt was staggered and unconvincing both in content and acting. The Asian girl I thought was about as wooden as an 18th century Galleon and although there should not have been any chemistry due to the circumstances, any attempt just didn't work, including the scene where she drops her clothes in the doorway. Totally embarrassing, dialogue, acting, direction...todo! There were many simply unbelievable parts and I can't help nut think that this should have been an 18 so that the makers could have exploited the violence and gun play to it's max which seemed to be it's mainstay anyway. Insteadwith a kiddie rating which I feel could have been executed so much better. Once I saw the rocket leave the launcher when Stathams house was attacked, and travel almost pedestrian like through his kitchen, giving them both time to take evasive action, my suspension of belief snapped and I had to enter the comedy zone for the rest of the film. All the time fighting my better intentions because the film had great production values, even if it did contain a tad too many jump cuts for my liking. It dipped in and out of great and mediocre for a couple of hours.
Statham earned a nice pay packet no doubt, but I'm sure he'll look back on this as a huge turkey that probably didn't warrant a sequel, of which I have not seen. Hopefully he'll not try and any more accents, god knows why this either wasn't dubbed or scrubbed from day 1 of the shoot. It would have worked better with his native accent, possibly tidied up for the US market who seem to have a problem with the 'mockney' south London drawl. There were so many dialects and accents it was a bit of a mess on that front.
This surely has to win the prize for most bullets dodged by leading man in any film to date.
Watch Ronin and see where it could have gone.