I've found myself in some kind of hell!

Each Day, A Film
February 1st 2012 (Retrospective)

We're going to skip merrily on to another film series, oh ye script kiddies who may or may not be reading this (and not, like, commenting, or following, or whatnot).

Can you guess which series that is? Well, here's a clue, in the form of a fun phrase: "No, I am not the gay."

That's right, it's time to talk about The Transporter.



And doesn't that make your heart sing? Because it does mine.

It's mix analysis time, once again; take one part action film, mix in Jason Statham, add in the south of France, a mildly comic sidekick, a villain who I want to say has played pretty much the same role ever since but have no evidence to back that up, and a timely human trafficking subplot.

Now add in car chases, foot chases, Corey Yuen-scripted mayhem, and, oh, let's just throw in a plane chase for good measure. The thing is that the mixture works as opposed to some of the other films recently written about that could have benefited from being cut into two different storylines and fleshed out (and yes, I'm looking at you here, the Resident Evil films).

For no real reason, just the prospect of writing about The Transporter films makes me happy with excitement.

It's not because they're well scripted - although they're not actually that bad, if you genially skip past the second one, but, well, we'll come to that soon enough - or that they have a genuine unignorable statement to make. It's because they're fun, but they know they're fun, and they don't worry about much else.

Look at it this way; the first film is the first time, if memory serves, I've ever seen an RPG deflected using a tea tray.

It's also the first time I've seen Jason Statham kiss a man.

(Although let's remember that he's still not the gay.)

This is one of those strange issues that comes up when your action sequences terminate with a lack of oxygen. Picture the scene; Jason Statham; a garage full of expendable mooks; a tub of oil. By the end of the scene, Mr Statham is seminaked, covered in the oil, surrounded by men, and that's clearly not homoerotic enough, so why not have him have to leap into the water nearby, submerge himself under the now burning-oil-covered surface, and need to steal oxygen from a dead man? It's pragmatism, right?

Ah, I'm making such a big deal out of something that's actually pretty cool. 

And that's the point of the film, frankly - to make a big deal out of something that's extremely cool; a professional, with his own code of conduct and and an extremely pretty car, up against ruthless international human traffickers. With some of the best stunts around.

To be honest, The Transporter falls into roughly the same pile as Dog Soldiers for me - not perfect (there are some odd missed beats, the soundtrack sometimes takes the dial all the way to French, etc) but close enough for Jazz.

So good, of course, that there had to be a sequel.