Continuing the theme of jumping straight into madness out of nowhere and staying on the same busy note for a long time, as was the start of the second hour last time round, this movie does much the same thing but gets going within the first 15 minutes. It continues on from where the last one left off, with some time skipped between them, and has much the same cast as the last one, including Luke, Katrina, Goldberg, Lists, K14 and Weyland (Ving Rhames), and of course Luke Goss.
From extremely choppy camerawork during combat scenes, to seemingly zero script power, this movie is Barely Watchable — that’s a couple of levels even further below Death Race 2 — and it’s only watchable if you’re really desperate and only due to the So-So cast and Decent genre. Personally, I fast-forwarded through most of the start, watching only the better bits, then skimmed past the rest and decided to give it a miss because I’ve got better things to do.
I also skimmed through Death Race 4 and it looked even worse — no wonder Luke Goss didn’t even care to come back for that one! Oh how far has this saga has descended since Statham’s cool original!
This is more of a remake than a sequel. Nothing really continues from the original. It’s not an identical copy, but some particular scenes are pretty much identical (with inferior execution of course).
As expected by the promotional material and the level of the lead cast members, this movie has a considerably cheaper vibe than the original — especially on the cinematography front — but surprisingly the acting is pretty good and the movie does very well at keeping the pace going fast enough to sustain an entertaining vibe. Credit to Luke Goss who performs out of his skin, backed by supporting cast members like Sean Bean, Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo who action fans will be familiar with from other movies and are all about as big & strong in action movie stardom as Luke Goss, if not bigger, so he’s done well to score them in his supporting cast and the producers have done poorly in not making him also just a supporting cast member for someone markedly stronger — maybe they had Statham in mind for Goss’s role here until Statham turned it down.
There are a couple of minor returning characters from the original, although one of them was killed last time round: 14K (meant to be dead) and the nerdy fat white guy who worked in Statham’s car crew.
The cheapness of this movie is telling throughout, but the pace does well to make it tolerable, however when it gets to around an hour in, when the prisoners get acquainted with their vehicles and begin racing and killing each other all in one fast paced long monotonous scene, the cheap & nasty level of this movie really peaks. The original never would have overwhelmed us like that, which only resulted in a kind of boredom due to constant hollow action after a shocking burst of pace. The original would have been much more conscious of momentum and would have considered the execution of this one comically bad. From the start of the second hour it becomes tempting to fast forward through a lot of the hollow action. And although there are a couple of in between scenes and minor plot developments, it pretty much doesn’t let up with the shallow monotonous racing drama from the start of the second hour until the end. The first hour was the good part of the movie, the second is wildly all over the place and has entirely lost focus.
It’s not until the last quarter hour when we learn that this is actually a prequel to the original, since Luke Goss gets burnt to a crisp and becomes the original Frankenstein racer who was already 4 wins in at the start of the original movie. From here, the last 10 minutes are actually pretty good. It’s just a shame we had to sit through (or skip) the previous half an hour — the main course of the movie.
All things considered, I rate this movie So-So — that’s around a couple levels below average, and about 4 clean levels below the original. But it’s not worthless — it’s mostly watchable, and mostly mildly entertaining if you’re terribly bored and have not seen it before or in a long time at least.
This movie has a simple concept but it does well to stay quite entertaining. It’s got a vibe similar to some of Van Damme’s and Scott Adkins’s movies — especially the ones where they’re in prison and forced to compete in lethal competitions for the entertaining of the viewing public. But this one has a twist — it’s based around lethal car racing. A bit like Robot Wars, with drivers. It even has a ‘house robot’.
Although its plot is simplistic and it has the odd dull patch, it’s mostly good, and occasionally very good, so I’m going to rate it Decent. This is of course helped by the Jason Statham‘s female partner in the movie — not his wife who is murdered, but his co-driver played by the beautiful Natalie Martinez — she definitely boosts the watchability of this movie. Other supporting cast members are generally decent too.
The ending was generally a good one — nice action but not topping earlier on, and a pleasant end to the story.
Sequels
If you enjoyed this movie you may be pleased to know it’s had a few sequels. But don’t get too excited yet.
There’s 4 Death Race movies in total, although Statham doesn’t come back after the first, and neither does Martinez. The 2nd and 3rd are starring Luke Goss from the Hitman remake called Agent 47 (not as good as Timothy Olyphant’s original) and the fourth Death Race movie sees a prior cast member in Danny Trejo take the lead role — he may look the part but when he’s the lead in a movie it’s generally a stinker (Machete for example).
Death Race 2 (2010) is pitched in a way that imitates the coolness of the original, showing Goss and his female co-star posing as the overwhelming feature of the movie poster, but frankly you only need to look at them to see they’re a poundshop/dollarstore imitation of Statham & Martinez. I rate it So-So, which is about 4 levels weaker than the original according to our rating system at the time of writing this review.
Death Race 3, I rate a couple of levels worse still — Barely Watchable.
Death Race 4 was even worse — literally Unwatchable.
This is one of The Rock’s earlier movies — he’s looking young, lean and fly here — not the middle aged beast we know and love today.
Being a Disney movie, it’s got a certain quality of production, but it’s also a bit juvenile and over-theatrical.
By shortly after 20 minutes in, when the main character realises something is very strange but curious about the passengers he just dropped off, things become interesting, and after a powerful opening with cool things happening and near-seamless entertainment, this movie looks set for a Decent rating, give or take 1 level depending how it continues.
The slightly juvenile vibe lets it down a bit, and for this reason, by the half way mark it seems set on a Decent rating still, even though there was some strong action and plot unravelling earlier. By the end, the decision hasn’t changed.
This movie sees classic Neeson in his element, albeit tamed down a bit due to his old age. The story is mildly intriguing. There’s some action, and a simple concept but just enough script to keep things mildly interesting.
Overall I rate this movie Below Average, but you may rate it higher if you’re especially in the mood for this genre and haven’t seen this one before. Especially if you’re a fan of the theme: travel, mountains, Everest, survival, improv, kidnap, manhunting, escape & evasion, bus driving, etc.
Tron: Legacy is quite faithful to the original concept, even continuing with a lead role for Jeff Bridges while focusing more on his son. It’s got a similar storyline but has been upgraded to modern style in both special effects (great) and drama (irritating).
With strong-ish new cast members and upgraded effects, while staying true to the original cult classic theme, the producers have clearly taken this movie seriously, and I have done too: I rate it Bang Average which is a few levels better than the original (by today’s standards). What could be improved? Well the script was all over the place without ever much happening, which is a bit weak in a 2 hour movie. It’s more than watchable — it’s quite entertaining at times — but the plot is lacking; and the cast could be improved too, even though it wasn’t particularly weak.
I’m not a fan of the privileged Chinese-Jew lead character in this movie (Even Kim, played by Greta Lee) — it’s clear she was gifted this role for her family allegiance rather than any significant talent. The next main female, Athena, played by Jodie Turner-Smith, a privileged black tomboy woman, wasn’t any better either. Indeed, most of the cast are pretty weak here too — it’s a typical LGBT lineup for 2025. The lead antagonist warrior, called Ares, played by Jared Leto, is alright, but it’s not enough to make the movie any better than Below Average. The script is messy for the most part, and hard to enjoy early on — the first half hour was especially weak, but it does improve after half an hour. It gets particularly interesting around half way through, when Ares goes rogue from his evil dictator in the human world, because he doesn’t want to kill Eve Kim, the lead female who he was hunting earlier. By 1 hour in, this movie looks set for a Below Average rating — not quite as good as the second movie from 2010, but better than the original from 1982.
This movie also benefits from an aged Gillian Anderson (from the X Files) playing Elisabeth Dillinger, the mother of Julian Dillinger, the main baddie, played by Even Peters — another typical annoying modern casting choice.
There’s some good action here — the main reason I rate it so low is because of the pace, with all the slow annoying soppy Netflix-grade drama, and even the fast action scenes are very slowed down. Add that to the annoying modern casting style and this movie is a clear level down from 2010’s even though it does have some strong special effects.
This movie gets off to a strong start, with consecutive scenes of high quality humour, mixed with some respectable action and intrigue.
Although the pace calms down before long, the higher quality than usual of Jackie Chan movie continues to shine through for a good hour — especially with the addition of Jennifer Love-Hewitt, who was still in her prime, at the age of 23 when shooting this movie, shortly before rapidly deteriorating (or being replaced by a lookalike).
But this movie is terribly let down by the last half hour, which is little more than a chaotic mess of a nasty laboratory scene. As such I rate this movie Bang Average, even though it showed great potential in the first half — not dissimilar from Jackie Chan’s movie 10 years later, called Chinese Zodiac (aka CZ12) which showed great potential early on but went terribly down hill as the movie progressed.
True story: in the making of The Tuxedo, Jackie Chan made JLH laugh so hard she peed herself on set (according to her own confession on a Graham Norton show).
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.
This movie is maybe slightly downhill from Transporter 2, but still a decent movie. It’s quite one dimensional in plot and lacking strong cast members aside from Jason Statham (The Transporter) and François Berléand (Inspector Tarconi). But there was a fair amount of the action we came for.
Robert Knepper did a decent job as the main antagonist in this movie even though he had very little plot to work with – aside from the final fight scene he scarcely did anything but make a few phone calls.
Natalya Rudakova was given plenty of screen time as the lead female in this movie. She played the kidnapped daughter of a politician, accompanying Jason throughout his journey. Her style may be pleasing to some, but for me it was quite basic and underwhelming. Horses for courses I guess.
The producers seem to have a thing for catwalk-skinny freckly ginger chicks, after Kate Nauta (a natural ginger, dyed blonde) was cast as the main muscle of the bad guys in Transporter 2 and now Natalya Rudakova (a natural ginger) is cast as the lead female in Transporter 3 – there’s more than a little resemblance between them.
This is the third movie in the saga – Jason and François did not come back for the fourth so it’s probably worth watching the first three sequentially then maybe skipping the fourth. While the budget kept going up, from $20M (for Transporter 1) to $30M (for Transporter 2) to $40M (for Transporter 3), the quality gradually decreased with each iteration of the movie – so it’s no surprise Jason and François decided to call it a day with this saga and new lead actors were hired for Transporter 4. But the good news is, Jason is rumoured to be coming back for Transporter 5 in 2025 – stay tuned for that.
The Transporter (2002) basically tells the story of a man who is a very good driver and gets hired to confidentially drive packages around. He conducts himself with great precision and pretty much always gets the job done, in style.
Jason Statham has been involved in a lot of good action movies in recent decades, and this is easily one of his best movies – probably his very best movie ever. This is where he really made his name in the big time – prior to this movie he only had supporting roles such as those in The One (2001) with Jet Li, and a couple of movies with Vinnie Jones. The Transporter was such a hit, it had multiple sequels, each one being not quite as good as the one before (as is usually the case with sequels). Owing to his on screen charisma and martial arts ability, Statham went on to secure the lead role in many other decent action movies (especially after he proved himself yet again in Transporter 2), and has since teamed up with many other stars too (including being a key figure in all of The Expendables movies, and joining the Fast & Furious movie saga from number 6 with a minor appearance and number 7 as a core cast member).
Shu Qi (of Gorgeous (1999) and Chinese Zodiac (2012) with Jackie Chan) does well as the lead female, especially early on – the chemistry between her and Statham is believable.
François Berléand puts in an outstanding performance as the senior police investigator who is cordially acquainted with The Transporter – very much respecting him, while also investigating him.
The Transporter is a fast paced action flick with good budget and just the right amount of downtime for the likes of romance and banter, at least in the beginning and middle. The action scene at the end is overly drawn out and in dire need of additional plot to continue the level of quality that the movie began with – this makes it a bit boring and very skippable for frequent rewatchers. Still, for the most part, it’s a masterpiece of a movie, if a bit one dimensional near the end. It could probably have edged into a 9/10 rating if it were more serious about the plot in places, especially towards the end, and had stronger villain characters – the main villain here isn’t a terrible actor, or is he uncharismatic, he just seems to be the wrong genre for this movie. He’d have been better placed as a sidekick to Joker in a Batman movie. So all in all, I give The Transporter a well deserved 8.5 and concede it may be even better for first time viewers. Well worth watching and rewatching every few years.
Sequels
There are several sequels to The Transporter. Enjoy the whole series sequentially, or just watch the first 2 or 3. Jason wasn’t interested in the 4th so another actor took that role, but rumour says Jason is coming back for the 5th in 2025.
Action Hero Movies
