Too much of everything

hyped garbage

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

While THE TRANSPORTER was a fun little action movie, going through the moves and delivering some very stable action sequences, it didn't really provide much out of the ordinary; aside from the oil fight, there was little that the average action fan had seen before. Things change in TRANSPORTER 2, an impossibly slick, overblown and often silly action flick that resembles a James Bond film on acid. Bald-headed Jason Statham is back as the gravel-voiced, smooth-as-heck driver, and delivers his own inimitable brand of martial arts hijinks, just as in the first film. Once more there are a bunch of assorted-race bad guys, who have some dumb idea to take over the world or hold it to ransom; the only person here worth mentioning is Jason Flemyng, who tears up the scenery as a stressed-out Russian gangster.TRANSPORTER 2 seems to contain non-stop action, moreso than any other film I can think of at the moment. There are lots of outrageous chase scenes, such as a speedboat chasing a school bus, and clichéd-but-fun fist-fights in which Statham takes on numerous bad guys one at a time, armed with a hose, amongst other things. This is a noticeably violent film that pushes at its PG-13 all the way through; it's far tougher and bloodier than the first, and is all the better for it. It's just a shame that some of the CGI-laden stunts are so dumb; for instance, I hated the bomb-disposal-by-crane moment, which pushes stupidity to new tepid levels. For the most part, though, TRANSPORTER 2 is slick but somehow old-fashioned, offering the kind of turn-your-brain-off action thrills we've rarely seen since their heyday in the 1980s. A witty script and lotsa violence and stunts make for a winning combination that surpasses the original's formula.

Now having seen all three of the Transporter films, I feel comfortable in my assessment of the third one as pure crap. While this and the previous entry don't really qualify as great cinema, they can still be enjoyed as entertainment. This sequel offers up a similarly thin premise, but executes it effectively and with little downtime for needless exposition. In fact this one is more streamlined than the first, clocking in at about 6 minutes shorter. The basic plot has Frank racing against time to get the antidote for a virus that infected a US government official and his family (and potentially a whole lot of other people). However, despite the shorter running time, everything that was good about the previous film is better in this one, namely the action sequences. The acting is mostly decent, although one of the villains, a female, didn't do as well as everyone else. Thankfully, she was quite a character and fairly easy on the eyes. Of course, it almost goes without saying that the fight choreography was excellent, done by Cory Yuen, who directed the first one. There was a really balletic quality to the fights that made them fun to watch, and the shooting style was able to adequately capture Jason Statham's abilities. The editing was a bit tighter this time around, but it also had the effect of making the hits seem harder, which I suppose is a good thing. There are only a couple of other things I feel worth mentioning in terms of the overall look and feel of the picture. Even though is from Luc Besson's production house, at times it looked and felt like a Michael Bay film, but not necessarily in a bad way. Part of this is due to the over-saturated color scheme which Bay uses in his film these days. Part of it could also be that it was set in Miami, which is where BAD BOYS and its sequel were set. Other than that, though, the cinematography was better and the humor was more appropriate than one finds in a Michael Bay film. Overall, the plot is just as ludicrous and convoluted as the first, perhaps more so, but the fight choreography and action sequences are a slight step up. Recommended for fans of the first one.

Okay, so now the transporter has super human powers. Forget Superman, forget vampires, the transporter can fly out tall buildings, land hard enough on a car to smash the roof and still walk away with not even a scratch. (And all because, hey, he was in special forces. LOL) And not only is he super human but everybody in this movie has kicks that can send people flying across the room. Besides the obviously stupidity of having normal people with such power, even more insane is when they just get up from said kick like they hadn't been hit at all. And maybe most laughable is a car that is able to jump from one parking garage to another AFTER crashing through a concrete wall! And you people think that is good writing?? Oh, and why would such a super human person with magical driving skills, such skills that they can make the car leap and do a 360 midair and rip off a bomb underneath, just sit there when the laser is on the boy? PLEASE, one fraction of a second in reverse and the shooter would never be able to get a fix on the target in real life. Or, I don't know, the boy could have just ducked down. What a joke!

The one thing that stands out to me in this movie is that there is a character (one of the baddies) that seems to have a serious allergic reaction to wearing clothes. At first I thought it was weird because it seemed that during a gun fight she would steadily remove items of clothing until such a time that she was only wearing her underwear, however it became clear that unless she was disguising herself as something, she simply walked around in her underwear, with her gun holsters strapped to her. Needless to say I actually found this character to be incredibly annoying and off putting – and it wasn't as if she was even attractive.Anyway, Stratham has come to Miami to help out of friend, and for some reason this French police officer has decided to come over as well (though I didn't actually think they were friends, just a couple of guys that seemed to always run into each other), however he spends his entire holiday stuck in a police station, because at first he is a arrested, and when they discover that he is a police officer (and innocent) they still don't let him go – nice vacation in Miami.As for Stratham, this time he is transporting a kid, but the kids gets kidnapped, but then halfway through the movie they release him, but the movie hasn't ended yet, because the movie is only halfway finished, which means that something else must happen. It does, Stratham drives a Mazarrati around Miami (or some other sports car) chasing a helicopter (and catches up with it), and then fights the bad guy on the plane (after dealing with Miss Underwear), and the crashes the plane into the ocean – and then the movie ends.Why, oh why, did I end up spending money on this trilogy. I am seriously not going to ever see that money again.