Customer Reviews
A case of diminishing returns - By: russell clarke, 13 Apr 2006 
Bendy faced Jason Statham is an unlikely leading man. First ....well he's got a bendy face. Every time he talks his jaw slews sideways as if it's connected by wires which are rusting away. Should have used galvanised....or aluminium. Secondly when he talks he doesn't. He sort of growls or mumbles in a growly sort of way. Brad Pitt does this too, except he doesn't growl, he just mumbles. Anyway Statham quite clearly fancies himself as leading man material when he's more like third bendy faced growly baddy on the left material. Lets face it, if he hadn't have gone out with beautiful but personality free Kelly Brook we would have never heard of him.
After the success of "The Transporter" which was entertaining in a crass , don't stop to think about this type of way, Jason's back for "Transporter 2" where the "The" from the previous film has disappeared, presumably transported somewhere . His character Frank Martin who lets not forget is British Military trained, is now for reasons never explained lying low driving the young son (Hunter Clary) of the U.S. Governments drug Tsar (Matthew Modine) on the school run. Needless to say this job turns out to way more dangerous than expected when some nefarious types involved with drugs in some way pretend to be paediatricians & then abduct the boy. Jack , being ex military , suspects straight away that some thing under hand is occurring but not quickly enough for him to be implicated in the plot & forced to work on his own initiative to prove his innocence & return the young lad to safety.
So far so clichéd, Jack then runs around a lot extricating himself from numerous predicaments that he usuallly resolves by exposing his bare gleaming torso & ...you guessed it, growling a lot. One of the most entertaining things, indeed by far the most entertaining thing about the first movie ( Apart from the hilarious homo -erotic sub-text) was the ingenious, fast edited fight scenes. Here more of the same ensues, except not as ingenious. As is the case with most sequels it's diminishing returns. Some of the scenes in the first movie made you cock a cynical eyebrow " Transporter 2" will have your eyebrows cocking so energeticallly they will leap right off your face. There is a scene where Frank removes an explosive device from the under side of his car that doesn't so much beggar belief but horse whip it till it's a shredded bleeding carcass. And how come I can never find a discarded iPod when I need one?
As dunder headed action movies go "Transporter 2" is okay, but it's a poor imitation of a film, the original, which in itself was a poor imitation of far superior action movies. And for an action movie there is nowhere near enough action, & what action occurs is invariably too asinine to reallly stimulate your action juices. Poor old Jason Statham remains an unlikely leading man, despite his ability to cope with the physical stuff ,because put quite simply he is,nt one. There is one saving grace however. At least he's not Steven Seagal.
