Transporter 2 DVD Review:

Relocated in Florida, Frank Martin (Statham) is still transporting but now the risks are lower, or so he thinks. Now the driver for the Billings family, his charge is to take their son Jack (Clary) to and from school but when Jack to kidnapped, the authorities think Frank is part of it. Now Frank has to clear his name and rescue the boy before it is too late.

As action movies continue to be dominated by American and Asian stars, there is one British man who is kicking and punching his way into that most competitive market and his name is Jason Statham.

Better known for his character work playing comedic, happy go lucky, cheeky chappies until in 2002 when writer/producer Luc Besson came up with the idea of making him hard. Casting him as ex-special forces soldier turned specialist driver Frank Martin in ‘The Transporter’ instantly made him a British action star as his kicked French butt in the South of France. Now three years later he returns to smack the hell out of the American’s in the Florida sun.

With a slightly larger budget and a bit more of a story than the first one (even though it is a bit like a ‘Man on Fire’), the good news is that the action quota has also been increased. Returning fight choreographer Corey Yuen has upped the fights and gone all out to prove that Jason wasn’t a one-punch wonder. Some of the fights are just as good as anything that Jet Li, The Rock or Jackie Chan could muster with the hosepipe battle been the highlight. The introduction of CGI to the series isn’t that good however. Not used in any of the hand to hand fight, it is used to beef up the vehicle action but this just makes the film too over the top.

You have to understand that this is an action film and nothing more so don’t expect much on the acting front. Only Jason Statham comes out of film with a lot to do but he doesn’t really have much to say. Amber Valletta and Matthew Modine have little to do expect argue for the usual clichéd, ‘you’re never here and you don’t know your son’.  Alessandro Gassman is a pantomime villain but his henchwoman Lola played by the gun totting, lingerie wearing Kate Nauta is the highlight of Frank’s adversaries.

Far-fetched, over the top but stupidly fun, ‘Transporter 2’ proves again that Jason Statham can kick ass as brutally as anyone. This is a character that he really has fun with and shows that he is as hard as anyone else on the big screen. Lets hope he keeps punching people for Britain for many a film to come.

Star Rating = * * *

PICTURE & SOUND

Presented in Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 with Dolby Digital 5.1, the movie is presented well.

BONUS FEATURES

Deleted Scenes (15.25 mins)
Entitled ‘The Kiss’, ‘Doctor Tyberg’, ‘Rent-a-cop’, ‘Audi chase (full)’, ‘Audrey breaks down’, ‘The Ransom’, ‘Chez Dimitri’, ‘Max fight’, ‘Max is dead’, ‘Gunfight with Lola’ and ‘Sonovitch is dead’, these deleted or extended suffer from the lack of a commentary track or introduction to tell you why they were removed.

Blooper Reel (2.16 mins)
Watch Jason Statham make a hash of his lines and the action sequences.

Featurettes

Making the Music (21.02 mins)
Director Louis Leterrier, composer Alexandre Azaria, soundtrack producer Jerome Lateur and sound engineer Etienne Colin talk about creating the score and choosing the music for ‘Transporter 2’. The director and composer talk about the importance of Frank Martin having a theme and setting the tone of the fights and chases through the power of the music. With behind the scenes footage from the recording with a full orchestra.

The Making of Transporter 2 (4.08 mins)
Producer Steve Chasman and stars Jason Statham, Kate Nauta, Alessandro Gassman and Amber Valletta talk briefly about the story, fights, stunts, car chases and realism of the piece.

Inside Look (2.19 mins)
Kiefer Sutherland takes you behind the scenes of ‘The Sentinel’ also starring Michael Douglas, Kim Basinger and Eva Longoria.

Coming Soon
Previews of  ‘24: Season 4’, ‘Nightwatch’, ‘Walk the Line’ and ‘X-Men 3: The Last Stand’

OVERALL 

The DVD package for ‘Transporter 2’ is a strange one. Rather than have an extended featurette on the fight or car chase sequences, they decide to have one on the music. The lack of a commentary track is also a let down. Fans of the film would have wanted to have known more about the stunts but they will be sadly disappointed.

DVD Star Rating = * *

Action often has difficulty trying to look too cool. The absurdity of the feats that the hero is able to accomplish takes away from the experience watching the film. Once believability is gone it makes it much more difficult to buy that anything is at stake in the film, and once the audience stops caring the film might as well be over. The cure that Transporter and even more so, Transporter 2, have found is overplaying the absurdity. All feats are so far beyond reality that the film becomes oddly entertaining even though we don’t buy a second of it. James Bond films have this appeal, and this is probably why there are still people who continue to follow the series even though the structure of the films has not changed in decades.

Frank Martin aka “The Transporter” has a new job. He is working for a political family driving their young child to and from school in Miami, Florida. On each trip back and forth from school, Frank grows closer to the kid, and he even begins to form a relationship with the mother as well. When he is taking the child to a routine doctor’s appointment, it turns into a kidnapping and Frank finds himself back in the action again. His car may have changed but all of his action moves are still the same. He his able to drive like nobody else, including the cops, and his car can do seemingly impossible things.

It turns out that the kidnapping is all a part of an elaborate plan to attack a certain area of government that stops drug trafficking. It has all been carried out by a hired mercenary and his brutal girlfriend. The plan is so elaborate that it is amazing that they were still able to fit in all of the martial arts action and stunt driving.

There is something clean and pressed about the action in Transporter 2. Perhaps it is the fact that there are a number of scenes in which Frank changes his clothes, just to be well dressed for the next fight sequence, or perhaps it is the bigness of all of the fights in this sequel. Very little can be taken seriously, but the sooner that is realized, the easier it will be to enjoy what the film really is.

The DVD is available in a version which contains both widescreen and full screen versions of the film. There are a few special features, which are mostly traditional in every sense. There are deleted and extended scenes, but none of them would have made the film any better. There is also a blooper reel, but it just doesn’t make as much sense to me when a blooper reel is on a film like this, unless it is to show stunts going wrong. There are also two featurettes, one on the music of the film and the other on the making of he film. The Making of featurette is probably the only feature worth mentioning, but the others beef up the DVD a little bit more.



Ryan Izay