Movies

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, September 2, 2005

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Three years ago the unheralded The Transporter, about a cool dude who ferried contraband for shady characters, shook up critics and action fans and promised to turn former British champion diver Jason Statham into an international star.

It didn't quite work out that way.

Following The Transporter, Statham lingered in secondary film roles. But the low-on-plot, high-on-action Transporter, directed by former Hong Kong fight choreographer Corey Yuen, eventually found a following on video and cable TV.

And so Statham is back, but Yuen is missed, in the Euro-trash-comes-to-America Transporter 2, a high-octane thriller with an implausible plot and cartoonish villains creating havoc in Miami.

Or at least a place that looks like Miami. You know you're not quite in the real world when the main villainness, played by rail-thin, over-mascaraed model Kate Nauta, shoots up an office with laser guns blazing in each hand while dressed in a pink bra, black panties, black stockings and clunky red platforms.

It's a look, all right. One wonders whether she'll hit her target or topple over first.

Nauta looks like a reject from Sin City, but she makes a definite presence.

So does Statham, the ultimate Joe Cool. Dressed in a white shirt, black tie and black suit and driving a souped-up black Audi, he confronts almost every situation with steely calm.

Even when he's surrounded by four young hoods straight from the Young Thugs Department of Central Casting, Statham's Frank Martin is steadfastly smooth. You know the thugs are the ones who are really outnumbered and that, as Frank purposefully removes his jacket to confront them, they're going down.

Part of the fun of The Transporter was watching Statham bring Hong Kong-style martial arts to France.

In Transporter 2 he doesn't have so many chances to show his lightning kicks, though there are a few. Statham's best moment comes when he uses a fire hose like a whip to beat off a gang of thugs.

One of the original film's most memorable sequences was a daredevil car chase, and so one is staged again. But director Louis Leterrier shoots much of it in such dizzying closeups and with such fast editing cuts that there's no sense of the overall scene until its spectacular final moment. Actually, the best chase in Transporter 2 is carried out on foot through Miami's Bayside harborfront. At the end, Frank commandeers a jet ski to ride alongside a road and pursue a killer who has hitched a ride on the back of a yellow school bus!

Transporter 2's plot, written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, who also collaborated on the original, revolves around a vial containing a deadly virus and a kidnapped little boy.

It takes a while to figure out how the two elements are connected, but we know a heartless mastermind is behind the plot.

Too bad he's played by Alessandro Gassman (son of legendary Italian actor Vittorio Gassman). With his odd accent and overbite, Gassman comes across as a cartoonish villain. He looks more like he should be playing second fiddle to a drug lord in some other movie.

Frank is the boy's chauffeur and bodyguard and when both are snatched, the boy's father (Matthew Modine) suspects Frank is involved.

The boy's mother (Amber Valletta), who has found more of a soulmate in the stone-faced Frank than in her husband, has pegged Frank as the good guy. So Frank is on the run from the cops while trying to find the boy and figure out the contents of the vial.

To counterbalance Frank's stolid assuredness, a comic subplot involving French Inspector Tarconi (Francois Berleand) from the first film buoys the plot.

Tarconi is on vacation in Miami just as Frank and the boy are kidnapped. Soon he's whisked off by federal marshals who believe at first that Tarconi is part of the kidnapping.

Of course, he's pixieish and charming. Soon Tarconi is cooking the marshals a good French meal while sneaking off to use their computers to uncover information for Frank, who is on the phone and on the run. Tarconi and Frank make an offbeat team. One can only wish that if there is a next time, they'll be paired more closely.

** 1/2

Transporter 2

Starring: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valletta, Kate Nauta, Matthew Modine, Francois Berleand.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, profanity.