A leisurely walk can bring calm to the overworked mind, but that walk need not be purely physical. If we entertain the notion of a metaphorical excursion, then certainly films are a figurative saunter. In a delightfully indulgent film like Transporter 2, our casual stroll just happens to be punctuated with lots of explosions and car crashes.
The film is the offspring of writer/producer Luc Besson and director Louis Leterrier, who earlier this summer made the brutal but enthralling Unleashed. In Transporter 2, they have constructed a film entirely out of a drive for speed and kinetics with the eponymous lead not so much a person as an elaborate set of movements.
The transporter is Frank Martin, an ex-Special Forces man who is able to exhibit an air of command simply by keeping quiet but appearing dissatisfied. The film begins with Frank dismantling four large men who were attempting to carjack his Audi. It's a stylish exposition meant to introduce the recurring motif that Frank is an unstoppable badass.
Frank's present job is to drive the son of the nation's drug czar home from school. However, bad guys kidnap the child, and the movie deals with Frank's efforts to rescue the boy, an enterprise that requires him to lay waste to large chunks of Miami.
As a genre picture, the script is unusually smart. It has a winding plot, with several layers of conspiracy orchestrated by a villain who represents a believable threat to Frank. Moreover, the dialogue is peppered with zippy one-liners like, "I'm not picking up a friend. He's French."
The joy of this film is that it invites laughter as the proper reaction to its excess and hyperbole. Consider the set piece where Frank has a bomb under his car, ready to detonate and make Frank gone in 60 seconds. A conventional film might have Frank dive out of his car right before the blast. That isn't possible for this movie, because one of Frank's rules is that a man respects his car, and this car is new. Frank's solution is to drive over a ramp, off axis, so the car flips midair and exposes the bomb to a crane hook which carries it off just as the explosive detonates. Whether or not you find humor in all that is a good indication of how you'll like the rest of the film.
Even the characters are brazenly off-center. Consider the villain's girl friend, Lola. Lola is something altogether unique, composed of one part Guns and Ammo, two parts Victoria's Secret and five parts water-proof mascara. She understands makeup the way Marlon Brando understood moderation. Transporter 2 reminds us of why genre movies are exhilarating entertainment when done right. Good filmmaking is craftsmanship and inspiration rather than routine cliché. While it may be interesting to think of the film as simply Hong Kong aesthetics engineered with European automotive efficiency, I think the real meaningful question is:Does Transporter 2 deliver the goods? Of course it does, and at 88 minutes, it does it with efficiency and punctuality.
Frank would approve.
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