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The Transporter
Stars:
Jason Statham, Shu Oi, Francois Bereland, and Matt Schultz
Writers:
Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen
Director:
Cory Yuen
Feature
length: 92 minutes
Extras:
Extended Fight Scenes With Optional Commentary, Producer and Actor Commentary,
Featurette, and Trailer
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and French and Spanish Language Dolby
Surround Soundtrack
Subtitles:
English Captions and Closed Captions and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Amaray Keep Case
Chapter
Stops: 28
Sound:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Surround Sound
Year
of Theatrical Release: 2002/DVD Release: 2003
Theatrical
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Home
Video Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: PG-13
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
Jason
Statham (Snatch) plays a cool as ice professional transporter with a strict code
of conduct and sharp martial arts skills developed from a shady past in the
military. Living in the South of France, he serves as a no questions asked
courier of parcels no one else will touch. On one job he gets a flat and while
changing the tire he breaks one of his own most important rules, never know what
you’re transporting. He discovers beautiful young Asian woman tied up in a
body bag inside his trunk and despite delivering her as if he had never bothered
to check his car’s trunk, he is double-crossed and subsequently gets even,
taking the girl and another car. Soon he is embroiled in a twisting scheme to
stop an Asian slavery ring operating in France.
As
outlandish as the premise sounds, “The Transporter” starts off with a bit of
promise and then disintegrates into a hodgepodge of martial arts over the top
heroics that might work in a “James Bond” or even an “Indiana Jones”
type film, but here is just a an excuse for Statham to show off some very good
martial arts skills he developed for the film and to blow a lot of things up.
The film goes wrong the minute Statham’s character lets his Asian guest just
have the run of the house while he goes a for a night’s sleep. For a guy who
is so precise and careful as we see him in the first twenty or so minutes of the
film, his blatant disregard for letting this woman have the run of his house
seems ludicrous. I mean think about it, she was cargo and up until this point in
the film he has not done a heck of a lot to treat her much better than that and
now he just throws caution into the wind and trusts that she will just leave his
house. What if she bought back the French police, who have been investigating
him or how does he know what kind of person she is? She could be a killer for
all he knows. I don’t know about anyone else, but whatever suspension of
disbelief I had went out the window in what to me just seemed like a character
change that was much too swift just to service the story.
Co-produced
and co-written by Luc Besson, we get a hero that is not unlike his “Leon”
character for “Leon AKA The Professional” or “Corbin Dallas” in “The
Fifth Element.” These are almost cowboy like characters with strong tough
exteriors, dark pasts, but a good soul underneath their action hero talents. In
both “The Fifth Element” and “Leon” there is a gradual persuasion for
lack of a better expression that drives the protagonist to commit heroic and
even selfless acts. Neither character just suddenly shifts gears to help out
their woman in distress, but here it looks as though thirty pages of character
development were tossed out to make a hyper kinetic action picture with no real
story. Considering the film was produced with literally a multi-national crew
with Chinese, French, and English being spoken and translated on the set day by
day to support the needs of the production, one can understand why the film
might be more action driven rather than plot or character driven, but
considering Director Cory Yuen’s last collaboration with Besson, “Kiss Of
The Dragon,” which is one of the better Jet Li films made post his American
debut in “Lethal Weapon 4,” I just think they simplified the story too much
and what could have been a fun action popcorn feature just becomes a quick fix
between meals while waiting for something better to come along.
Twentieth
Century Fox Home Entertainment presents “The Transporter” as a “Special
Edition” DVD with an anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) aspect ratio on one single
layered side of the DVD and a pan and scanned (1.33:1) aspect ratio presented on
the other side of the DVD. The anamorphic widescreen presentation is sharp and
colorful with no hint of artifacts or grain and preserves the slick look of the
film nicely. The pan and scanned version is also solid in appearance, but looks
a shade or two duller than the widescreen version. The colors just don’t look
as vibrant and the images and visual compositions seem flat. Both presentations
feature a well mixed English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Soundtrack coupled with
French and Spanish Language Dolby Surround Soundtracks and English Captions and
Closed Captions for the hearing impaired as well as Spanish Language Subtitles
encoded as options. There is a feature length audio commentary with star Jason
Statham and Producer Steven Chasman that is screen specific and retrospective at
the same time for both aspect ratio presentations. Director Cory Yuen joins
Statham and Chasman through his interpreter on three extended fight sequences
that run collectively for approximately fifteen minutes. Presented in a
letterboxed (2.35:1) aspect ratio, the choreography and rhythm of the fight
scenes take front stage since there were cut down a bit in part to secure the
film’s PG-13 MPAA rating in America. A short “Making Of Featurette”
(12:02) and a (1.85:1) trailer for “The Transporter” (1:26) wrap up the
extra features included on this DVD.
If
you are an action film junkie then “The Transporter” will definitely deliver
the required martial arts fights, gun firing, and explosions you desire, but for
everyone else, rent it first. “The Transporter: Special Edition” is
available on DVD-Video now from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2003 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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The Transporter