Just weeks after the release of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo comes yet another sequel that nobody wanted in Transporter 2. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that people won't see it; in fact it was No. 1 at the box office this past weekend.
Watching the trailer for Transporter 2
I wanted to call the producers and tell them that Tony Scott had already made their movie; it's called Man on Fire. Both involve an ex-soldier with a past, a kidnapped rich kid where the kidnapping isn't quite what it seems, and the kid's mother being drawn to the soldier (the actresses in each movie even look similar).
Having seen the movie, I now realize the story (something about drug lords trying to kill government officials with a virus) wasn't important anyway but merely a flimsy way to string together even more ridiculous stunts than the ones featured in the first movie. While my memory of The Transporter is a bit hazy, I seem to remember a bit involving deflecting an RPG round with a metal tray. As hard as it is to believe, the sequel trumps this with a stunt involving a soaring car, a crane and a bomb.
As driver-for-hire Frank Martin, Jason Statham almost seems to be auditioning for James Bond, except with no charm and perpetual stubble that sometimes looks more like make-up than actual hair. Matthew Modine (remember him?) plays the child's father and one of the virus's intended victims. All I can say is that he sure picked a strange comeback movie -his character is whiny and irritating The movie's biggest problem is that it too often tries to take itself seriously: All of the scenes between Modine and his wife are trite and have dialogue ripped from a Lifetime movie. If the film's writers (Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen) had just made the whole thing as silly as the crane stunt, the movie might have worked better.
Or maybe, just maybe, the movie shouldn't have been made in the first place. I mean, what's next, Cutthroat Island. Yarr! 17
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Ben Saylor
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Kate Nauta and Jason Statham star in 20th Century Fox's Transporter 2.
