I’ll do as I did with the Crank movies with these and keep them all on one page. It’s likely I never would have watched all three were it not for the temptation of both sequels appearing on Sky HD in the past few weeks. I’d already seen the first one (old short review below) and it didn’t exactly blow me away.

I have to say, I was surprised in many ways. Even the first one seemed better than I remembered today. I still find The Girl (as I’ll call them) in this part to be one of the worst written female characters I’ve ever seen, but I have a lot to say about the sexism/misogyny I perceived that first time around as it comes across through the whole series, especially the third, because it’s definitely more complicated (or, at least, accidentally interesting) than I thought back then.

So, the simple set-up of the first movie is that Jason Statham is The Transporter – a special kind of delivery man, who promises to deliver anything, anywhere, no questions asked. He has various rules of operation like: sticking to the deal, no names, and that he won’t look in the package; but when one of said packages in his trunk moves, he breaks that third rule and finds a Girl in there. As they say, hilarity ensues. Or something like it.

The most interesting thing that happens, as I touched on in my original review and just mentioned, is that this girl – who has presumably been kidnapped, who has only just met Statham, who even we in possession of all the facts still understand as a knowing accomplice (he does not immediately intend to set her free or anything) – pretty… no, too soon… gets naked and falls in love with him. Like, way too quickly. Romantic music starts to play almost the very moment their eyes meet, the girl still bound and gagged in Statham’s trunk. It’s awkward to say the least, and it both surprises and worries me that so few other reviews I’ve read of the movie talk about this particular scene.

But I guess you have to look at the rest of the movie too. It’s not like Statham or any of the male characters in these movies are fair representations of every man on the planet either. Statham’s body is exposed just as much as the girl’s, if not more (I don’t recall, in fact, any really naughty bits of either party being seen, unless the bottom of the girl’s buttocks counts), and as Mark Kermode has recalled many times on his Radio 5 reviews show, he even gets his naked torso covered in oil at one point. If you’re to argue sexism from the women’s side, it has to be said, you have to go the other way too. The guys in these movies are, at times, even dumber than the girls… example, in part two, when Statham and villain are so involved with their own fisticuffs that they fail to realise the plane they’re fighting in is in freefall and both of them will die if one of them doesn’t take the controls…

So, yeah… you have to take the original Transporter and its sequels for what they are… and what they are is pure action with a little good story thrown in. The interesting thing to me now is how much more interesting the series gets as it progresses. I honestly expected the sequels to be almost lifeless retreads of the same or very similar stories, but no, each has it’s own little gimmick; and part 3 in particular even turns on the whole misogyny (if that’s what it is) thing.

Transporter 2 is basically Man on Fire meets Mission: Impossible II. We meet The Transporter again and his job now appears to be driving a rich family’s kid to and from school, but almost as quickly as the mother gets overwhelmed by his sexiness and jumps on him (seriously, she does… quicker than the girl in the original), a villainous plot involving the kid is hatched. The plan is to inject the kid with a bio-engineered virus which kills anyone the infected breathes on over a period of 24 hours. His father is a big anti-drug figure headed for a conference with other anti-drug figures and the idea is to wipe them all out. Oh. They have a Girl on their side who pretty much only wears underwear and shoots two machine guns, too.

The action in part 2 is just as much fun as the first movie, and I have to say I even got a little kick out of how stylised that underwear-clad machine gun girl was. Most of all, as I say, I was just surprised that they put Jason Statham’s character into such a different story for the sequel, even if it does remind me of many other movies.

OK, so we come to part 3, and I must say, I’m surprised to say I think it may be my favourite of the bunch. Transporter 3 again takes the Transporter character and gives him something new to deal with. As in the first movie, he is transporting a person… but the customer here is particularly edgy, and not only refits Statham’s precious car but sticks a bracelet on both driver and cargo’s wrists which, if they stray too far from the vehicle, will cause a pretty large explosion. It’s kind of Speed meets Crank – that other Statham-starring “don’t even try reviewing this” franchise…

What I found most interesting about part 3 is that it reaches a certain stage 30 minutes in where, though Statham has shown his bare chest to The Girl, and The Girl has made slight googoo eyes, she hasn’t yet jumped on him like The Girls of the previous two movies. Minutes after I realised this, it was almost as if the screenwriters realised too, and they promptly have her take drugs and drink alcohol, lowering her inhibitions. Still, she doesn’t jump on him. Instead, even later still, she accuses him of being gay for not jumping on her, which he denies, saying, “Did it ever occur to you I might not be in the mood?” (Seriously.) – then she takes the car keys, strays to a dangerous distance from the vehicle (remember the bracelets), and forces him to strip for her in exchange for the keys.

There’s still for sure a wet dreamy nature to this scene that can be read as inappropriate. But, I don’t know, it’s like I said, it just seems there’s something else going on here with the sexism/misogyny/whatever you wanna call it that isn’t quite as easily dismissed as you might want it to be in a movie of this kind. It does work, to a point at least, both ways, and that not only makes part 3 more interesting to me than the others, but it even makes both previous parts more interesting than they were… something very few sequels can claim to do. The actress playing The Girl in part 3 is almost as bad (and her dialogue as insultingly written) as the one in the first movie, but Statham has come a long way as an action star, he has much more presence. There’s something just feels more right to me in the latest part which kind of makes watching the whole trilogy in one sitting, as I did here, strangely more rewarding than it ought to be. These movies really aren’t too bad at all, and I’d probably be interested in a fourth. I still don’t know if I’ve got what I wanted to say even clear in my head let alone in what I’ve written, but that in itself to me kind of speaks well for the movies if they can make me ponder so much about a character. I find the guy interesting… and in movies like this, that’s more than you should expect.

December 5th, 2005:

Luc Besson’s mark is kinda all over this one though he only co-wrote and produced. It tires a little toward the end (though I admit I was a little tired for other reasons too), and I’ve gotta say I think it’s maybe a little too misogynistic, some people are gonna have major problems connecting to the hero and the heroine – she does open her legs a little too fast for him after everything he does. But otherwise I kind of enjoyed it.