Jason Flemyng – Action Hero Movies

This movie tells the backstory of most of the core X-Men characters including: Professor X (Charles Xavier) played mostly by James McAvoy (co-star of Wanted alongside Angelina Jolie; also in Glass alongside Samuel L Jackson and Bruce Willis) to be a generation or two younger than Patrick Stewart’s version of Professor X; and there’s Erik aka Magneto played by Michael Fassbender (star of Assassin’s Creed) to be a generation or two younger than Ian McKellen’s Magneto. There’s also Raven aka Mystique played by Jennifer Lawrence; and Hank McCoy aka Beast played by Nicholas Hoult. We also see Alex Summers aka Havok (played by Lucas Till) – in theory his character is the younger brother of Scott Summers (Cyclops) who featured in the original X-Men trilogy from the decade prior. And there’s several more weird characters besides these.

The main antagonist is played by Kevin Bacon. His character, Sebastian Shaw, is the doctor responsible for torturing young Erik (Magneto) and killing his mother; and most of this movie revolves around Erik’s mission to get even. Sebastian Shaw also has mutant powers himself, including the ability absorb energy from all kinds of weapons, then transform it and throw it back as he pleases. He also wears the original version of what eventually becomes Magneto’s hat, preventing Xavier from reading his mind.

We also get a brief cameo from Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine, when Charles & Erik originally approach him, but he immediately tells them to get lost without even asking what they want, and they do, and that’s as far as his role in this movie goes.

Other significant characters include Emma Frost, a telepath with diamond skin played by January Jones; and Angel Salvadore, a fireball shooting girl with butterfly wings played by Zoë Kravitz. There’s also CIA agent Moira MacTaggert played by Rose Byrne, and a disappearing red-skinned devil type character called Azazel played Jason Flemyng. And that’s not all but we’ll be here all day listing every significant mutant in this movie – we’ve covered the main one I think, there’s just a few more.

Considering how drama-heavy this movie is, and how childish it often is from time to time, I have to rate is OK – no better than the original X-Men trilogy – in fact it’s probably slightly worse, on a par with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) but the margins are small so I’ve rated them all Bang Average.

Straight into the good stuff that we know & love from Transporter 1, this movie begins with Jason Statham in his element with a fancy car and a gang of thugs trying to steal it.

It then proceeds with Jason playing difficult cryptic word games with an energetic young child – something only a disengaged nerdy adult in Hollywood could come up with – probably an attempt to build plot and characters but it’s very unrealistic not to mention incredibly boring for this genre – sack the guy who dragged that bit out. It should have been a much shorter feature and/or much easier and more fun.

François Berléand rejoins us as Inspector Tarconi – this is one of the best things about this movie. This time he’s on vacation, gets raided by a swat team for his association with Frank Martin (Jason Statham’s character) then discretely helps him out via the FBI database.

Good to see Shannon ‘the Cannon’ Briggs given a minor role. Let’s Go Champ! For those who don’t know, he still holds the record for the most round 1 knockouts in professional heavyweight boxing history.

Jason Flemyng did very well as Dimitri the scientist.

Kate Nauta performed well as an over-sexualised LGBT type baddie with guns – not to my taste but she put her heart into it – credit where it’s due.

Amber Valletta put in a bog standard performance as an anaemic-looking lead female character with whom Jason’s character was almost intimate.

Plot was a bit one dimensional to say the least – clearly pushing a theme of contagions and injectable cures. Nice shiny vials. Poor scene building. Filthy motives.

Still, there’s plenty of well made car chases and combat scenes to give us what we came for. With a more present & fertile lead female character worthy of credible romance, and a more creative and less malintended plot than the one we’ve got, and one or two better adversaries (or more character-building & screentime given to the better actors already cast here) this movie could have been about as successful as Transporter 1, but as it stands, it’s markedly inferior but not massively so. I give Transporter 2 a decent 7.5/10 rating. Best watched in close succession with the first and third movies.