Transporter 2 (2005)

Image credit: Transporter 2: Glenn Watson

ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM He's got a fast car...on the road to nowhere

Transporter 2 betrays the legacy of the first Transporter, if such a thing is possible. In that movie (which is actually just decent enough to merit a follow-up), The Italian Job's Jason Statham was Frank, a puggish ex–Special Forces commando in the south of France who specializes in high-risk driving jobs (bodies in the trunk, bank robbery getaways) and fights, in a smart black suit, as if inhabited by the soul of a grizzled Asian martial-arts master. Showcased in clever if preposterous action sequences, his superhuman killing skills were imaginatively choreographed and lucidly shot, at least compared to the sequel, which is one of those action movies that flash-edits its fight scenes into epileptic nothingness. Here, Frank is in Miami chauffeuring Matthew Modine and Amber Valletta's 6-year-old, who gets kidnapped and infected with a deadly virus. (The antidote is kept, as most antidotes are, in a glowing purple orb.) In place of the original's straight-faced ridiculousness, this one plays like pure parody. In the best scene, the villain has affixed a bomb to the bottom of Frank's speeding Audi A8. To remove it, Frank rides the car off a ramp and spins a 180 in midair, so that the car is soaring upside down as he scrapes the undercarriage against a dangling construction hook, which, of course, knocks the bomb off the car just as it blows. Feel free to chortle: T2 is more unintentionally entertaining than many bad movies, and it's definitely a funnier car romp than The Dukes of Hazzard. Yet we expected more from director Louis Leterrier, fresh off this year's underrated actioner Unleashed, and co-writer Luc Besson (The Professional), whose good-guy/bad-guy wordplay is at the MST3K-ready ''Sorry, this flight's canceled!''/''No, you're canceled!'' level. The greatest thing about the movie is Statham, a charismatic silent, deadly type who deserves to take the wheel behind a better franchise.