The Transporter
Matinee & snacks
IMDB: "This film is about a man (Jason Statham) whose job is to deliver packages without asking any questions. Complications arise when he breaks those rules"
Cinerina: "This film has the best car chase I have ever seen and I hate car chases. Also the action is excellent and Jason Stratham is perfect and why ruin it with a random unbelievable romance?"
I guess if I were you, I wouldn't necessarily watch the preview, read those blurbs, and then run out to see the movie. That's why I get at least 450 words to tell you why you will have a ball in this film! He's a professional getaway driver, an interesting cinematic profession by any standard, and damn can he drive that BMW. I was seriously impressed and stimulated and I am always bored to distraction by car chases and the like. It was breathtaking! It's either a BMW 735 or a 765, depending on which character you believe, and I suspect they will sell a zillion of them (even though it's the 1999 model). His is all tricked out, of course, as one would expect a professional transporter like him to have. So, whiz bang action stuff, no problem. But is it interesting? You bet, with a little mystery too.
It transports you all right, to a world of excitement, action, and intrigue, and it's worth nearly all of your money. Sure, there are some leaps of logic, etc, but it IS an action movie, and it justifies most of it very well. Can I just say oil fight? Oil fight! Maybe it was cribbed from a Bruce Lee fight but who cares? It's great. Super editing, including sound editing. Wow! Tension! Suspense! Pow pow! Hey, what did you expect? "Meserizing, tour de force!" Nah. But it is seriously a blast to watch and experience. Really! The fights are up at Jackie Chan's level and our hero is actually non-lethal in his approach, all tough talk to the contrary.
The film is marred, sadly, by two elements: a weird kind of horrible Chinese rap soundtrack and a weird, kind of horrible pseudo romance. Honestly, sometimes a romantic story line does help an action film (Michael Biehn and his unconsummated urges for Terminator's Linda Hamilton and Aliens' Sigourney Weaver), but sometimes, even when it serves the plot, it just gets in the way. Chinese rap is less useful. The Transporter's ersatz omance with Lai (Shu Qi) seems thrown in purely for the Caucasian audience. We weren't buying it, either.
Directed by Cory Yuen & Louis Leterrier and written and produced in large part by Luc Besson (Fifth Element, The Professional), The Professional is slick, well-paced, and tons of fun. I wish it had come out a month ago when it was still hot and boring, but I'm glad it's out at all.
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. reviews@cinerina.com Check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/ - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource http://www.mediamotions.com and http://www.capitol-city.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 33083 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 794832 X-RT-TitleID: 1116127 X-RT-SourceID: 755 X-RT-AuthorID: 3661
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews