Shimmy Shimmy Y'all Shimmy Y'all Shimmy Yay

Each Day, A Film:
February 2nd, 2012 (Retrospective)

That sequel, funnily enough, was called The Transporter 2.



There's a basic rule when it comes to filmmaking in Europe; If something is successful, take it to America. Seriously, stop and think about the Milennium trilogy, or The Killing, just for recent takes on it.

There's a good rationale behind this: American films tend to have higher budgets, which mean you can ramp what you're doing way past eleven if you need to, and a wider audience for your antics. At the same time, you have to lower any pretensions of intelligent filmmaking or artistic statements, because of how your film will play in Peoria.

And I know you can tell what comes next because no, it's not a great problem with The Transporter films. And you're right, and also a little snide, but that's forgiveable. It's okay, you're allowed to judge, we all do it from time to time.

Now, there's a set of magic ingredients when it comes to The Transporter, and number two in the series manages to deviate from this without even recognising it. Those ingredients are roughly as follows:

Dodgy Client + Woman in Trouble + Extreme Driving = Film.

In Transporter 2, the client isn't dodgy - the antagonist is - the woman's not in trouble, it's her child - but at least there's some fun driving. Not sure about the formula? Wait until we get around to Transporter 3.

In a funny kind of a way I'm all for the Americanisation of smaller films, because it means they've achieved a kind of success already, rather than having to work too hard and go grey-haired about trying to make a name in the European film market. Let's not forget that Louis Leterrier was able to parlay the success of the first two Transporter films into the Incredible Hulk gig, a film that would have been massively improved by including the majority of the deleted scenes other than Bruce Banner being punked by sorority girls.

So if nothing else - and, again, that's an unfair assessment - Transporter 2 is an exemplary marker of success for the franchise simply because of the transatlantic switch. The film also has amazing stunt work, a strangely compelling if derailed and deranged storyline, and the fact that Frank actually develops an opposite number in the form of Lola, who's as much The Gunner as Frank is The Transporter, although without the guaranteed results.

The only thing to note is that the film is less gleeful about what's going on than the original - although at least Frank's accent has thankfully moved across to Acceptably Transatlantic rather than the I Am Not A Cockney of the original. In the original, the stunts were exceptional; in the sequel, they're just there.

So what would happen if you stripped out the Americanisation but kept some of the features and went halfway back to the franchise's roots?