The horror.
The horror. The horror.
What
seems to have a great story with an enticing plot in the
beginning goes desperately wrong after the first twenty minutes.
The Transporter is nothing short of a failure, which ends
up being one of the worst movies of the year. The first scenes
have the catchy flair of xXx, and are quite good, I
admittedly was hooked; but somewhere in the middle of it all the
would-be motion picture event turns into a scummy little kung-fu
disaster. We don’t see an ounce of good acting, except for Jason
Statham’s acceptable performance. And to add another con to the
already giant list, the casting directors choose actors who
could barely speak English. The direction was terrible, the
camera angles make us sick, and the production is horrific. The
film is as funny as Kung Pow to watch, but there is one
problem; it’s not supposed to be a comedy. I wanted to scream at
how bad it was, after the first hour, the entire piece lost any
sense of respect I had earlier had for it.
Frank
Martin (Jason Statham) is a man who will transport you, or any
possession ypu have, in exchange for cash, no questions asked.
As long as he has the perfect dimensions, weight and quantity of
the people or objects you are transporting, he can get away from
any person or force, and get everything to the place where you
want it to be, on schedule, following an estimated time limit he
provides his customers with. He has a set of rules that must not
be violated, two of the most important are numbers two and
three, no names are exchanged throughout his dealings and that
he will not look inside of his customers packages. For years he
had been strict to his rules, and had never broken one of them,
but curiosity took its toll when a tote-bag he was transporting
started moving. When he opened it up, he finds a Chinese woman
inside. At first, she tries to run, but he catches up to her
quickly and stuffs her back into the trunk of his car as if
nothing has happened. When he delivers her to the address he was
provided, things get messy, and he sees that she is going to be
tortured. He decides to save her, and she chooses to stay at his
house. The two fall deeply in love, or at least he falls deeply
in love with her, she goes with it for the sake of getting
something that she wants accomplished, and he is the only one
who has the physical power to do so. Up to this point in the
flick, I was prepared to give it a passing grade because it held
my interest, but then things turn into some weird type of a
foreign filmmaking extravaganza. If you’ve just heard all of the
fun parts from me, then why see the entire movie?
The
direction is sloppily done and busily cut, which is not in the
least bit exciting. Oriental filmmakers have some weird vision
in their heads, telling them that if they cut a movie so you can
barely see anything that happens, then it will some how cover up
all of the errors. This works occasionally, but the terrible
acting here is much too noticeable to try to hide, because
everyone is horridly wicked in the way they go about their
roles. At the beginning, Jason Statham is good, but after that,
just like the rest of the film; his performance plummets and is
unable to capture what Vin Diesel did in the similar xXx.
Though he was pretty bad, he wasn’t the worst of all; that title
goes to Qi Shu, who plays Lai, the woman who is “transported” to
evil men. The first of many problems I have with her is that she
can barely speak English, some of her lines are even in Chinese,
but we don’t get any subtitles to accompany them. Many people
say she’s cute, but I find her to be repulsive looking from head
to toe. Not much better is the actor who plays her father, Ric
Young, who made me want to laugh. His character is hilarious,
though he is supposed to be the most serious of all. When he
tries to look mad, it’s sad how funny the end result turns out
to be.
I can
officially announce that The Transporter is the most
pointless film of the year. Terrible performances, direction
that will make you sick, and an ugly sense of style make it far
less than a treat to watch. With the absence of the first twenty
minutes, which earn it the one bucket that it rightfully
deserves, there is absolutely no point to seeing it. I am not
able to say this about many movies that come around, but I can
deem this one painful to watch. Unless you would like to be hit
over the head with mindless stupidity for multiple times, look
elsewhere, far elsewhere.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews