Transported straight to the crapper

I had high hopes for Transporter 2. The original Transporter was a decent, entertaining action flick that although I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy the DVD, if I found it in the 3.99 bargain bin, or if the movie happened to be on late night cable, I’d happily watch it at least a couple more times.

Unfortunately, Transporter 2 failed to deliver the goods. Despite some truly spectorqular moments, the movie as a whole just doesn’t work. Although it had a lot of the technical requirements of spectorqularity (bad CG, really bad use of technology, lame acting, stupid characters, caricatured villains, etc.) the movie just isn’t any fun to watch. It checks in at only 87 minutes, but it feels like 187 minutes.

The plot is pretty typical crappy action movie fare that starts out tired, and descends into the absurd. Our hero makes a promise to a kid whose parents are having problems, then has to deliver on his promise so the kid maintains his faith in people. Along the way, there’s way too many stupid Jackie Chan style fight scenes with plenty of idiot bad guys to beat up. If that’s your thing, you might like this movie more, but I get bored with it pretty quick.

For a movie with “Transporter” in the title, you’d think there’d be some better driving. The chase scenes were uninspired - I’ve seen better in The Dukes of Hazzard. And the car was crap. The guy is supposed to be some bad-ass expert driver, and he drives a bone-stock Audi A8 with a W12 badge and an automatic transmission? How much did Audi pay for that placement? Whatever it was, it was too much. They’d have been better off going with Charlie Sheen’s car from The Wraith, or Mark Hamill’s ride from Corvette Summer. At least then you’d have something interesting to watch.

Things to watch for:

The single scene that saves this movie from a 1 cube rating. You’ll know it when you see it, and it is right up there with the scene from Torque when the two bikers drive right at each other, lock up the front wheel, rotate and smack the sides of their bikes together.

The main bad guys’ blonde sidekick, who apparently can only kick ass in lingerie. Too bad she’s not that attractive.

If you can figure out how the whole deadly virus thing at the end works, let me know. It still doesn’t make any sense.