athersgeo: Darth Vader meets Riverdance (Default)
[personal profile] athersgeo
I finished off my movie kick last night with The Transporter...

This was plainly: One of the stupidest movies I've ever sat through. The whole opening hour was beyond credulity. First, there was the opening car chase, which admittedly, was nicely filmed and whatnot (particularly compared to the Bourne Supremacy!) but completely and utterly wrecked by three of the characters who just behaved like the worst kind of slapstick comedy characters. Ugh.

Then there was how the central character (Jason Statham) discovers that his next 'package' is a girl, AND what he subsequently does, namely feed her juice, through a straw, through a hole in the duct tape across her mouth (!) then let her out of the car but on a rope leash for her to pee (!!). Surprise surprise: She escapes.

At this point in the movie, I was giving serious consideration to switching it off. There hadn't been one single fight scene and frankly, the whole thing was silly.

It got another chance when he brought the girl back to the car and proceeded to take out two cops "no muss no fuss" - but, to be honest, it just got sillier and sillier beyond that point. There's the amazing exploding house which gets no fewer than THREE shoulder launched missiles (yes, you read that right, the bad guy in this had enough clout to have shoulder launched missiles) pumped into it in addition to 5000 rounds of ammunition (I don't know a lot about guns and so on, but surely it's not your regular ammo that'll shoot straight through A STONE WALL?!). Then there was the means of escape from the amazing exploding house - namely via a conveniantly placed SCUBA tank that Statham's character just happens to have stashed away 'just in case'... Oh please.

Frankly, the film's a mess. The fight scenes - when they EVENTUALLY come - lurch from good (the whole bus depot sequence) to WTF? (the sequence at the bad guy's house). The car chases are so-so. Jason Statham couldn't keep an accent up if you paid him (oh, wait, they did - and he still can't) - I couldn't work out what the hell nationality his character was supposed to be because he kept sliding from mid-Atlantic to East-end London and back. They've tried to make the hero a conflicted guy who fights with himself over doing the right thing (aka helping the girl) but he comes off, instead, as smug and not a little stupid. The girl veers between sassy and stupid. Neither she nor the hero are particularly likable and the bad guy is about as frightening as a glass of hot milk - and that's WITH him rather graphically smothering one of his own workers.

The best character, in the end, was the French police inspector, played by François Berléand. Now HE was an interesting character. If only the movie had been about him instead...

(no subject)

Date: 2005-03-06 02:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ex-mercurial539.livejournal.com
First, Jason Statham is all about the pretty. Otherwise, why would he have to keep on losing his shirt in the movie? *smirk* The Transporter provided me with mindless action film entertainment. I classify it with the chop-socky films I enjoy.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-03-06 03:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] athersgeo.livejournal.com
I'd normally agree with you, but I was too conscious of just how silly it was for a movie that was taking itself so seriously. And as pretty as Jason Statham is...I can't get past the fact that he looks like one of the Mitchell Brothers from Eastenders without the acting ability.

(no subject)

Date: 2005-03-07 07:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ex-mercurial539.livejournal.com
*snerk* Maybe he's a long lost Mitchell brother... though we'd have to rechristen him with a one syllable name... Jase, perhaps?

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