Film 13 (9/2/2005)

Transporter 2 (2005)

Director: Louis Leterrier

Recommended by: nobody

Has Fentablar seen this before?: No.

I'm reminded of one of Jim Carrey's lines towards the end of Ace Ventua: Pet Detective - "Whoah-ho-HO! Fiction can be fun!"

Transporter 2 makes no attempt whatsoever to be realistic. More to the point, it makes every effort possible to be as unbelievable as God coming down from heaven and stopping the bullets. This is perfectly fine - anyone who goes to this film expecting that everything is believable must not be very familiar with action films. By the way, this is a major reason why The Matrix was so successful - by creating a virtual environment, the extraordinary fight scenes were very believable indeed.

So, pretend that this movie takes place in the matrix but isn't about the matrix, and you'll be fine - right?

Well, not really (though it does help a lot with a particular scene mentioned by Roger Ebert in his own review of this film). I did find a majority of the fight scenes enjoyable (in particular, the fire-hose scene), but that's about it. The plot is not very well though-out. The acting, with exception to Jason Statham and Francois Berleand, is bad. The score is cookie-cutter. They waste a perfect opportunity to do an awesome chase scene using a Lamborghini.

Do yourself a favor and do not take Transporter 2 seriously. If that means you can't see the film, so be it.

Ratings (scale of 1 to 5):

Plot Effectiveness: 2/5. If more thought had been put into this plot, the same premise could have been used and a better plot could have developed.

Cinematography/Shot Selection: 2/5. The first Transporter had much better driving scenes, and it didn't even have the chance to use a Lamborghini!

Overall Acting: 3/5. Statham and Berleand do very well, the rest of the cast is very mediocre at best.

Score/Soundtrack: 3/5. Bearable, but very cookie-cutter.

OVERALL RATING: 2.5/5

~Fentablar~