The Transporter (2002)

The Transporter (2002)

 

Starring: Jason Statham, Shu Qi, Matt Schulze, François Berléand, Ric Young, Doug Rand, Didier Saint Melin
Director: Corey Yuen, Louis Leterrier
Action Director: Corey Yuen

 

The Transporter was definitely a product of its time. It came out within two years of both Gone in 60 Seconds and The Fast and the Furious (before that became a parody of Hollywood’s action excesses in general), cashing in on the whole “awesome car-centric action” sub-genre, complemented by Corey Yuen’s fight choreography at a time that Hong Kong-style fight direction was still big in Hollywood. It does right by both elements for the most part, buoyed by Jason Statham’s laconic charisma and physical skills.

The film revolves around Frank Martin (Statham), a former Special Ops type who now lives in Nice, France, making a living as a “transporter.” In other words, he’s a glorified getaway driver, smuggler, and errand runner for (generally, but not necessarily) shady types who need an especially talented man behind the wheel. The movie opens with him helping a team of bank robbers leave a bank with millions of Francs (this was before the Euro came into being) in bearer bonds. In darkly comic moment, we learn that his first rule is there can be no renegotiation on the initial agreement, from cost to cargo. In this case, the robbers show up with a extra man, which Martin’s car was not outfitted for. After insisting that he will not drive with the extra weight, the lead robber shoots the (heh) dead weight and kicks him out of the car, thus opening the film with its first crazy car chase.

The whole incident calls the attention of Inspector Tarconi (François Berléand), who suspects Frank is involved but can’t prove anything thanks to his car being registered under several different license plates. At this time, Frank is contacted by another group of shady types who want him to transport a package from Nice to another part of the country. What is supposed to be a routine and simple job is complicated when he gets a flat tire along the way. While retrieving the spare, he learns that the contents of the bag—Rule #3 is that he never asks about the contents of his cargo—are indeed a living person. Curiosity (or compassion) ultimately cloud his judgement and he opens the bag at one point, discovering that it contains an attractive Chinese girl, Lai (Shu Qi, of Gorgeous and Shanghai Fortress). She tries to escape at one point, but he recaptures her, although the local highway patrol (or whatever they’re called in France) has already started snooping around.

Upon deliving the cargo to a fellow whose nome de guerre is Wall Street (Matt Schulze, of Out of Reach and The Fast and the Furious), Martin is given another job to transport a briefcase to a third address. While at a refreshment stop, his souped-up BMW explodes, almost killing him in the process—the highway patrolmen in the trunk were not so lucky. So, Martin stomps back to Wall Street’s mansion and kicks the living snot out of all of the henchmen there…and steals a car for good measure. Unbeknownst to him, Lai was able to escape and hide herself in the same car he stole—a big coinicidence if you ask me—which ultimately convinces Frank to let her tag along. What we learn from her is that Wall Street is involved in human trafficking of Chinese slave labor—shades of Shaft in Africa (which was also set in France)—although the reason for her being treated like a package is never elaborated upon. And once Wall Street’s goons attack his posh manor with machines guns and RPGs, Martin is going to ultimately take a stand for The Right Thing, his rules be damned.

I had seen most of this movie on TV back in 2004 or so, and enjoyed both the fight scenes and the glimpse of Shu Qi’s panty-clad buttocks that we were treated to. I hadn’t watched it again since—I tried to check it out from my English school’s library back around 2008, but someone took it and never brought it back. So, watching it again was almost like watching it for the first time from start to finish. With that in mind, I have to say that this is a very silly movie. We never learn the reason for treating Shu Qi’s Lai as much as a traffick victim as the other Chinese people, or why her dad (Ric Young, Seven Years in Tibet and Kiss of the Dragon) needed her smuggled into France anyway. Nor do we ever learn how the bad guys found out that Frank had broken his own Rule #3.

The silliness extends beyond the plot holes and into the physics, which surprisingly has nothing to do with wire-fu (there are probably a couple of wire-assisted moves, but the action is mainly grounded). The biggest example is during the assault on Frank Martin’s house, when hundreds of rounds are being pumped into the structure, with little CGI sparks representing the bullets. How none of them hit neither Frank nor Lai cannot be explained by the laws of physics or probability. Nor can the movie defend itself for Frank being engulfed in flames following the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade before jumping into the water, but emerging completely unscathed. There’s also a Bodyguard from Beijing moment with an RPG entering the kitchen where are heroes are, and how they have time to move across the room and dive for cover before the grenade, still in the same room, detonates! And what’s with a normal bazooka round generating a dadgum Praxus Wave[1] when it explodes?

The action was handled by Corey Yuen and I find it fascinating that despite a general dip in quality in the man’s work starting in 2001 (with the CGI-overkill Avenging Fist), the man’s work in France (of all places) ranks among his best from 2001 to the present[2]. It helps that Luc Besson—whatever you may think about his body of work on the whole—has a good eye for action and gave Corey free reign, with minimal producer interference from the Hollywood types. According to the DVD commentary, several of the fights were cut down for time and violence, notably a bit with knives in the bus station fight. But for the most part, everybody let Corey work his magic with the CGI being used in the more dangerous car stunts, and not the actual fighting.

Previous to this film, Statham had appeared in “hip” crime films like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. So being a tough guy was something he was good at. Even so, and despite appearing in the Corey Yuen-choreographed The One, nobody knew the man could fight. Well, that all changed with this film. The fights aren’t many, but they have that Hong Kong charm to them without getting bogged down in the wire-fu that so many Hollywood producers wanted to engage in following the success of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. During the first mansion fight, there’s a nifty big involving Frank fending off attacks from multiple men armed with fire axes, which is very Jackie Chan in its presentation.

Near the end, there’s a short fight between Frank and some anonymous henchmen at a port in Marseilles, with them fighting in between a bunch of containers. Corey Yuen had already done something similar in the 1989 Cynthia Rothrock films Blonde Fury, so I’m guessing he was recycling some old ideas for the benefit of Western audiences who largely hadn’t seen something like that before. The showstopper is the fight at the bus station, which has him finding in and around a bus against a dozen henchmen armed with metal poles…that were just lying around the bus for no good reason. And then he takes on a hulking thug, at which point the film takes a page from Heroes of the East and Frank coats his entire body in oil so that nobody can grab him. His bootwork in this sequence is quite good and the entire set piece can probably be placed in a list of the “Best Martial Arts Sequences in a Movie Made Outside of Asia.”

Only the finale really disappoints, partly because it’s vehicle related (I’m not as big as a car chase fan as others are) and partly because the best stunts (which Statham himself performed) were done against a green screen. I guess since there hadn’t been much vehicular mayhem since the opening sequence, there needed to be at least a final car chase of sorts for a film called The Transporter. I just wish the stuntwork had been a tad bit more authentic in the end.

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[1] - named for a scene in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when an entire planet explodes and you see this ring-shaped wave of energy expanding from the explosion.

[2] - Corey hasn’t had a new credit in the Hong Kong Movie Database since 2017’s Soccer Killer, so I’m wondering if he has already retired.