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.