The Transporter Trilogy Review

For a supposedly revered trilogy of modern day action films ‘The Transporter’ series is surprisingly – and uniformly – bad.

Get ready for lots of this.

Perhaps it is Jason Statham’s evolution as an action hero, perhaps it is the cool cars – I can tell you it is NOT the cool soundtracks – but I for one am amazed that this trash justified not one but two sequels already, and with Mr Statham’s predilection for films with numerical suffixes it would be brave to bet against a fourth.

It is ironic that the ex-Olympic diver Jason Statham found renown thanks to Guy Ritchie movies as a fast talking, quick witted larrikin, yet rose to true fame on the back of mono-syllabic generic macho crap like this. Now he seems typecast as either a supporting character in bigger movies, or a headline of smaller stuff. By the way I include the Crank films in that cadre, though they are inspired over the top nonsense and a welcome respite from the all too serious state of other action films, they are small films nonetheless.

In each of the Transporter flicks, Statham is Frank Martin, an all business ex-military ‘transporter’ operating mainly in coastal Europe. He works and lives alone and defines his role with three rules:

  • Rule #1            A deal’s a deal. No amendments or changes are accepted.
  • Rule #2            No names.
  • Rule #3            Don’t open the package.

In essence he is Ryan Gosling’s character from Drive, only with less hair and more cred with a male audience.

 The Transporter

The name is Martin, Frank Martin. An early and eventful job clearly illustrates Frank’s driving abilities, quick thinking and adherence to the rules mentioned above. He picks up another job shortly after.

This job seems routine, delivering a 50kg bag from one point to the next. Except this bag is wiggly and has a great arse (as we find out later). After some shenanigans in making sure that the ‘package’ returns to the carboot and thereafter successfully delivered, Frank finds himself unwittingly in the bad books of the girl’s addressee, the ridiculously named Wall Street, giving Frank an excuse to prove what a fast driving, high kicking and hard hitting son of a gun he is.

The Transporter is similar to Kiss of the Dragon at times, indeed this films’ director is listed as the ‘action director’ of that film. If only he decided to stick to his strengths…

The action scenes in this film are of course the highlights, with an early car chase and a couple of fights standing out, but the rest of the film is pretty terrible. Of course you could level that accusation about many action films, but I mean really terrible.

The dialogue sucks, the plot scarcely makes a lick of sense most of the time, the acting is lousy – Shu Qi as the ‘package’ has practically every line of dialogue clumsily dubbed, I can only imagine how bad the recorded versions were. Let’s just say there may be a reason she never broke into English language films.

Furthermore her character’s dad and the French Police Inspector who routinely and randomly shows up everywhere are lousy cartoonish characters, while the so-called bad guy tries to look hard but can only come across as confused.

And then there’s the music. If the rest of the film sounds like amateur hour, let me just say that the incidental music and soundtrack are as bad as any film I can ever remember. More damning is the fact that it is full of electro-ish stuff and hip-hop, two genres I actually count among my favourites.

The film has more product placement than a K-Mart catalog, with BMW and Mercedes doing quite well for themselves, but Tiger beer and Pepsi obviously forked over some cash too.

And as for Jason Statham? Well he was seen as a background character before The Transporter, somehow his bald bonce and buff bod are now everywhere, with Crank, Death Race and Expendables credits, as well as two more Transporters.

I’m 90 minutes into this marathon and right now wishing it was a Crank-athon.

Final Rating – 6 / 10. An oh-so generous 6. A couple of decent action sequences can’t save this film from mediocrity. Die Hard Stat fans or 12 year old boys need only apply.

Transporter 2

Big changes to the not-awaited sequel. Note no ‘The’ in title, and this film is brought to you by our friends at Audi, a watch company and Heineken. Revolutionary stuff.

Frank now resides in sunny Miami, soaking up rays and I guess SPF 30+ ing his bald head. He is running a kid-tax service (a la Man on Fire), both as a favour to a friend and as a break from the high stress world of… driving things around.

In any case the inevitable takes place quickly with the kid being napped – as in kidnapped – and held ransom to force the prominent father (Matthew Modine) to… do something political. I can’t remember and it sure as hell isn’t important.

There is an ultra skinny lingerie clad assassin and Significant Other to the once again bland foreign bad guy and J-Stat gets to look emotionless and determined a lot while he performs super-human feats of driving and hand to hand fighting – usually sans shirt.

This film actually fares better than the first, not because of the good stuff it brings to the table, but due to the noticeable absence of many of the elements that made the first so pathetic at times. The action remains implausible yet entertaining, but the god-awful soundtrack of the first is gone, as is the terribly forced romantic subplot and (most) of the daytime soap dialogue that hurt my ears so.

But for some inexplicable reason they called back the French Inspector to once again bumble around speaking in an accent. This time he is dropping in for a brief holiday. The actor must either be a big name in France or a close friend of Statham or the director, I can thing of no other reason for him to be in the films. He sure as hell doesn’t add anything to proceedings aside from the occasional pointless chat with Frank.

Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. A better effort all round, but below average for a true action film.

Transporter 3

So the second one excised most of the dross from the first film and as a result was leaner, meaner and better. Whaddya reckon they try in the third?

How about hitting the reset button and going back to square one? Frank is dragged from momentary retirement by another mostly bland foreign bad guy to escort a young and perky ‘package’ across Europe. (And might I say that out of the three films this is the worst ‘package’ yet. A freckly redhead with a scowl and vacant eyes. In fact for a trilogy pandering to males 13-39 Transporter really dropped the ball on this aspect. Surely there are enough desperate starlets willing to appear in a dumb action film to secure a couple of lookers?)

Back to the movie – again proudly presented by Audi. Frank and the girl grow accustomed to one another and the car – seeing as how the quirk in this film is that proximity bracelets on their wrists will turn them into haggis filler should they stray more than 50 feet from the vehicle, I think Audi specified this twist as a condition of their product placement.

Again the action sequences are OK but lack anything to set them apart from many better films, especially as seeing they are essentially the same in all three films (Frank takes his shirt off and fights the bad guys who encircle him one at a time) and the violence levels are restricted due to the PG ratings.

I’m not a car guy but I also think the car chases are pretty boring in this film too, I could just be saying that as I nodded off periodically in the last hour or so…

Final Rating – 6 / 10. To me this just screams out ‘quick let’s squeeze a few more dollars before they realise how bad this is.

Trilogy Summary

With Statham’s Stat-thus as the Action guy of the moment I can fully understand why these films keep getting green lit despite the fact that they are all mediocre at best. But I can’t for the life of me think why they can’t continually have the right ingredients yet keep coming up with crap like this. There is more enjoyment in 14 minutes of either Crank film then there is in the entire 5 or so hours of this trilogy. I’m sorry fanboys but it’s true.

My highlights of the film – and essentially the only bits I still remember a couple days later – are as follows:

The Transporter – Arse-cam.

Transporter 2 – Why is she always wearing only underpants? The flipping the car in a 180 to use a crane hook to remove a bomb, then having the car land on its wheels. Diving out of the way of a crashing jet.

Transporter 3 – How they couldn’t find one actress better looking than the pixie they plumped for?

The Transporter trilogy – Why isn’t this all better?

I don’t even have to look any more…

Final Trilogy Rating – 6 / 10. I’m on record as saying Jason Statham is an underrated actor and a fine action product for us all to enjoy. None of that was inspired by these films. Statham, Hollywood and directors everywhere can do better.

So can you.

OGR

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
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