Transporter 2
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
Rated: PG-13
Website: http://www.transporter2movie.com/
Release Date: 2005-09-09
Cast: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Kate Nauta, Matthew Modine
Director: Louis Leterrier
Screenwriter: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
WorkNameSort: Transporter 2
Our Rating: 3.00
With an impossibly shiny underground set-to between Über-driver Frank Martin (Jason Statham) and some cartoon baddies amidst gleaming retrofitted Beemers Transporter 2 proudly announces itself as a smart(ish) man’s dumb pleasure. Producer/ Euro-action kingpin Luc Besson’s late-summer line is the epitome of his Tex Avery-meets-Bond-meets-Hong-Kong-action ethos. A series of ephedra-injected set pieces is put in motion by Frank’s efforts to stop a Colombian bad guy (Alessandro Gassman) from letting loose a retrovirus on an international drug control conference in Miami. Now throw in an endangered kid and hot-mom-in-distress Amber Valletta; a comic-relief French police chief (François Berléand, back from T1); and some action bits involving jet skis flown onto expressways and the like. Voilà! But what would a Besson actioner be without a Femme Nikita? This one offers Kate Nauta, playing an impossibly anorexic/fit assassin with a ripped babydoll, pumps, dual blazing Glocks and a permanent sneer. She’s quite an, um, presence, and the film she’s in is an embarrassment of giggles.
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2005.