Transporter 2 arrived in American theaters on September 2, 2005, three years after The Transporter made Jason Statham a B-movie action lead. Louis Leterrier directed. Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen wrote it. The film runs 88 minutes, and it wastes almost none of them.
It is also, by the numbers, a mixed bag. Metacritic sits at 56 out of 100. Worldwide gross: $89.1 million. The tagline promises “The best in the business is back in the game.” The movie mostly delivers on that, and mostly fails at everything around it.
Trailer, via Acapulco Press.
Frank Martin Relocates to Florida
The premise is a shrug. Frank Martin has relocated from southern France to Miami, Florida, where he fills in as chauffeur for Audrey and Jefferson Billings as a favor to a friend. Jefferson is a government narcotics control policy director. The family is wealthy. The marriage is strained.
Frank bonds with the Billings’ son Jack, picking him up from elementary school after subduing a gang of carjackers who try to steal his Audi A8 W12. That opening set piece is the movie in miniature: a clean mechanical problem, a driver who solves it with the car, and a fight staged around the vehicle rather than away from it.
Then Inspector Tarconi arrives for a visit. Frank rebuffs the drunken advances of Audrey. The plot starts moving.
Impostors at the Doctor’s Office
Frank takes Jack for a medical checkup and finds that impostors have killed the real doctor and receptionist. A lengthy fight erupts with the impostors, led by the trigger-happy Lola, played by Kate Nauta. Frank escapes with Jack.
Back at the Billings house, Frank gets a phone call: he and Jack are in the sights of a sniper capable of penetrating the car’s bulletproof glass. Forced at gunpoint to let Lola into the car and evade the police, Frank is taken to Gianni Chellini, the operation’s ringleader, who demands a $5 million ransom from the Billings.
The kidnappers leave with Jack. Frank removes an explosive from his car a split-second before detonation.
This is the movie’s best stretch, and it is best because it is stupid in a controlled way. The sniper who can shoot through bulletproof glass is a rule the film sets and then obeys. The bomb under the car is a clock. Leterrier stages both with a straight face, and Statham plays them with no face at all.
The Virus in the Makeshift Lab
Frank recovers a syringe left by the kidnappers at the doctor’s office. Jack is found seemingly unharmed. With Tarconi’s help, Frank tracks down one of the kidnappers, Dimitri, and pretends to inject him with the syringe.
He follows Dimitri to a makeshift lab, fights off another henchman, and discovers the kidnappers have manufactured a deadly and highly contagious virus. Jack has been infected and has passed the virus to his parents.
Frank is forced to kill Dimitri. Chellini’s scientist hurls the antidote out of the window. Frank retrieves one dose intact and sneaks into the Billings’ home.
That is the plot. It is a series of errands connected by driving, and the film knows it. What it does not know is how to make the errands mean anything.
Statham Holds the Center
Statham is the reason to watch. He was already typecast by 2005, and already better at this than anyone else working. Frank Martin is a man with a code and a car, and Statham plays the code as a physical fact rather than a personality.
Amber Valletta has the harder job as Audrey Billings. The script gives her a strained marriage and a drunken pass at the help, and she plays both without asking for sympathy the movie has not earned. Matthew Modine, as Jefferson Billings, is given even less: a policy director whose son is taken. He is a plot function.
Alessandro Gassmann plays Chellini, the ringleader, with a calm that reads as boredom. Kate Nauta’s Lola is the film’s one true invention. She is trigger-happy, dressed in lingerie and a trench coat, and she is the only person on screen having fun.
François Berléand returns as Inspector Tarconi, the French cop who exists to be exasperated. Jason Flemyng plays Dimitri, the kidnapper Frank tracks and then kills. Keith David appears as Stappleton. Hunter Clary plays Jack Billings. Shannon Briggs plays Max. Raymond Tong plays Rastaman. George Kapetan plays Dr. Sonovitch.
The Audi Is the Best Character
The action sequences earned the praise they got, and they earn it for a specific reason. Leterrier shoots cars the way other directors shoot fists. The Audi is not a prop. It is a character with rules, and the film keeps finding new ways to break those rules and then restore them.
The carjacker fight at the school works because it is small. The sniper sequence works because it is a threat Frank cannot outdrive. The bomb works because it is a deadline. The lab fight works because it is ugly.
What does not work is the connective tissue. The virus plot arrives late and changes the stakes from a kidnapping to a public health emergency without doing the work to make either one land. The antidote thrown out a window is a screenwriting convenience, not a turn.
What the Script Cannot Fix
The criticism aimed at the script is fair. Besson and Kamen built a machine that runs, but the machine has no interior. Frank Martin has no arc. He starts the film as a driver who protects a child and ends the film as a driver who protected a child. The Billings marriage is introduced as strained and resolved by nothing.
The film also has a geography problem. Miami is a setting, not a place. The movie could be set anywhere with highways and a mansion, and the script never gives the city a reason to matter.
None of this sinks the movie, because the movie is not trying to be about anything. It is trying to be 88 minutes of a man driving well. On that measure it succeeds.
A Sequel That Knows Its Job
Transporter 2 is a good bad movie that knows exactly what it is, and that is rarer than it sounds. The $89.1 million gross against a mixed critical reception tells the story: audiences wanted the car, the fights, and Statham, and they got all three. The sequel Transporter 3 followed in 2008, and The Transporter Refueled came later.
The Metacritic score of 56 out of 100 is the right number. It is not a good film. It is a film with a good engine and no steering. The parts that work — the Audi, the sniper, the bomb, Nauta’s Lola — work hard enough to carry the parts that do not.
Hard Numbers
- Title: Transporter 2 (French: Le Transporteur 2)
- Release: France, August 3, 2005 (EuropaCorp); United States, September 2, 2005 (20th Century Fox)
- Director: Louis Leterrier
- Writers: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
- Runtime: 88 minutes
- Genres: Action, Thriller, Crime
- Worldwide gross: $89.1 million
- Metacritic: 56/100
- Score: 5.6 of 10
Release Calendar
| Date | Territory | Distributor |
|---|---|---|
| August 3, 2005 | France | EuropaCorp |
| September 2, 2005 | United States | 20th Century Fox |
| 2008 | Follow-up: Transporter 3 | — |
| Later | Follow-up: The Transporter Refueled | — |
Transporter 2 is a movie about a man who is very good at one thing, surrounded by people who are not good at anything. That is the whole review. It is 88 minutes. It cost you nothing to watch it twice.
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