A Man of His Rules

Jason Statham had an unlikely path to stardom. A trained martial artist and diver, Statham was deep into athletics, eventually diving for the British team at the 1990 Commonwealth games (like the Olympics but for member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, the former colonies of the British Empire). He then went on to model as well, having a tough-guy handsomeness that helped sell products to thirsty men and women. Between all this, and the he spent selling goods on street corner market stalls (basically hocking stolen goods to rubes) got him cast in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the theatrical debut of director Guy Ritchie.

Lock, Stock was followed by a second Guy Ritchie film, Snatch, which proved highly successful at the Box Office (in no small part due to a scene stealing performance from Brad Pitt in the movie). It was The Transporter, though, that gave Statham his first successful franchise. The film, written by French creative Luc Besson (who also gave us The Fifth Element) and directed by Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk and Fast X, although let’s try not to hold those films against him), is fast, slick, and just the right level of silly. It struck a chord with audiences banking a respectable $43.9 Mil at the Box Office before going on to be a solid, steady performer on the home video market (when that actually mattered).

Statham found the perfect role in The Transporter, playing Frank Martin. The actor has a way of carrying himself, a kind of brawler heaviness that is great in this kind of action film (even if he couldn’t work in the kinds of martial arts flicks you’d think a dude with his kind of training could handle). He’s big, he’s stocky, he’s about as far from Bruce Lee as you could get, but he also handles himself with amazing agility. The film needs him to play a one man army, up against droves of nameless criminals all to bring down a mob-like organization, and Statham is able to handle it with aplomb. He was the right actor for the right job and he carried The Transporter all the way across the finish line.

We’re introduced to Frank Martin (Statham) as the getaway driver for a gig. Parked outside a bank in Monaco, Frank is there when four masked gunmen come running out, bags of cash in hand. However, Frank refuses to drive; they had a contract, three men of a certain weight for a certain distance, and now with four they can’t make the precise getaway he had planned. And it is precise, down to the kind of shocks he has installed in his car for the weight expected and the amount of gas he allotted for the drive. When his refusal to move goes on long enough, the lead robber shoots one of the goons, shoving him out of the car. Then they make their escape, with Frank doing an excellent job driving through the streets of Monaco, losing the cops and making a perfectly effective escape.

Back home, Frank’s friend, and local police inspector, Tarconi (François Berléand), arrives at Frank’s house to investigate all the cars in the area that match the one used in the robbery. Frank’s plates don’t match (because he switches them out before jobs), but Tarconi knows, and Frank knows that Tarconi knows. Frank is a professional, though, and keeps his business to himself, which the inspector respects. So they part, and Frank heads off to another job: transporting a big bag across the country to a mansion. Halfway through the drive, though, Frank gets a flat, and then when he checks his trunk he sees that the bag is moving. Within is Lai Kwai (Shu Qi), a woman who, if Frank isn’t careful, is going to drag him into a whole world of shit… which she does. And now Frank has to find a way to bring down the criminals after him and Lai and bring down their whole organization just so he can go back to the life he’s built for himself. The quiet, organized, professional life he craves.

The first thing I notice every time I watch The Transporter is just how efficient the film is. The entire opening section, with Frank performing his job for those robbers, sets up everything we need to know about the man. He’s efficient, he’s organized, he has everything planned, and he doesn’t like it when anything goes outside his rules. The opening also shows us that he’s brutally efficient at his job, waiting without a care until the robbers solve their own problem. We get to see that he’s a fantastic driver, that he doesn’t really have fear in the face of obstacles. And we get to learn that he’s charismatic and funny as he banters with the robbers during his breakneck drive across the city. All of that in a quick and breezy ten minutes for the film.

The rest of the film strikes a different pace, letting the world around Frank steadily organize itself, filling in details as needed. That doesn’t make it bad, though. We already got all the character development we needed for Frank in that first section. The film can then shift back a gear (to talk in the parlance of cars) so that we can keep up with the film and not feel overloaded. A second job, a skirt for Frank to (unwillingly chase), and then the broader plot of the story all come in quick steps, sure, but nothing like the pace of the opening. We don’t get that same fast pacing to the film until the action picks back up again in the last act.

There is one pretty good fight sequence midway, after Frank gets double-crossed and goes back to the mansion of a criminal, Darren "Wall Street" Bettencourt (Matt Schulze), that tried to have him killed. But it’s the last act of the film that really gives us wall-to-wall action. A gun fight at the docks, then a brawl, followed by a brawl on a parked bus, then a brawl in the garage (a very inventive one with a whole lot of motor oil), and this then leads to a car chase followed by a big truck takeover sequence. It’s one very efficient action set piece after another, with little in the way of character development but, then, we don’t really need it at that point. All we need is Frank kicking ass and he does, again and again.

Statham handles all of this like a proper action star. Although I doubt he did all his own stunts (some of the aerial drops, and a few sequences on the truck especially, probably needed stuntmen) he does enough of the fighting and brawling for you to know it’s clearly him. There’s rarely a point where you’re sitting there going, “that’s obviously fake,” because the reality is set by Statham. He’s there, punching and kicking his way through bad guys, and it all feels perfectly, bone-crunchingly satisfying. The action in the film is great.

With that said, everyone around Statham feels like they come from a different movie. Statham bends reality around him, making for a very solid, very professional movie, but the other stars feel more comedic, or silly, or like they shouldn’t exist in Frank’s world. Lai is shrill at times, pitched too high, making her a bad fit as Frank’s love interest. Her father, Mr. Kwai, as well as Bettencourt, feel like cartoon villains. None of them can match the charismatic gravitas of Frank, sucking down their side just a little. It’s never truly terrible, but you can’t help but wish the cast around Statham was as good as the lead actor.

Still, Statham is able to carry this movie on his beefy shoulders. He has the style, the swagger, and the fighting chops to make a perfectly solid action star. The Transporter works, and finds all its fun, because Statham is invested in the movie, giving it his quiet cool to make every scene click together. It’s hard to imagine another star being able to fill Frank’s shoes and do the character justice (and they tried twice, both with a movie, Refueled, starring Ed Skrein, and then in a TV series, with Chris Vance in the title role, and neither of them are anywhere near as good). This was Statham’s film, and everyone else had to get on board.