François Berléand, Jason Statham, Matt Schulze

This film is about a man (Statham) whose job is to deliver packages without asking any questions. Complications arise when he breaks those rules.

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78% liked it

171,641 ratings

Critics

53% liked it

121 critics

PG-13, 1 hr. 32 min.

Directed by: Corey Yuen, Louis Leterrier

Release Date: October 11, 2002

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DVD Release Date: April 15, 2003

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Flixster Reviews (13,964)


  • September 14, 2009
    Not bad at all but I wish Besson would stop Producing so much and start directing again!
  • June 18, 2009
    "Transportation is a precise business."

    When The Transporter first came out, in 2002, I was fifteen. Seems impossible, but that was seven years ago. And now that I think about it, I guess what the Film-world really needed back then was a white action hero who could...( read more) kick some serious ass. Or so the Hollywood powers seemed to think, anyway. Sure, it's crass and weird and at least a little troubling to view things that way, but you can't deny there was a vacancy in the category. Arnie and Sly were almost ready to collect Medicare. Keanu Reeves was content to meditate and make Matrix sequels. Bruce Willis was becoming an actor who was "good with kids." Chuck Norris was always a born infomercial pitchman, even at the height of his fame. Steven Seagal was a Buddhist embroiled in lawsuits. And Matt Damon and Daniel Craig were still taking baby steps towards action stardom.

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    Of course there was Vin Diesel, whose hotness and coolness couldn't be ignored among ladies and gentlemen. Diesel had clearly established himself as a franchise after XxX, The Fast and the Furious and Pitch Black. But there was only one of him, he's racially ambiguous in a way that gets a lot of people's motors running (and may alienate others) and his acting style always makes you think he's basically kidding about the whole thing. All this may go some distance toward explaining how Jason Statham, an English actor most Americans had never heard of, got his name above the title in The Transporter.

    A former Olympic diver with a martial-arts background, Statham offered a sort of limey-Zen version of Diesel's Brooklyn-by-way-of-SoCal swagger. He's got the shaved head and the impressively cut physique. He wears nice suits well, despite the impression he gives of being an East End 'ard man ready to bust heads at a football match. Best of all, from a filmmaker's point of view, Statham has a certain stillness or inward-looking grace that translates into unmistakable screen charisma. You know what I mean: He's a Clint Eastwood man who lives by his own rules and thinks before he acts, but when he acts, whoo-boy.

    Statham was selected for stardom, not experience (his first acting role had been only four years prior, in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock) by Luc Besson, who is clearly the brains behind the Transporter franchise, even though he direct none. It's a frankly commercial package film of the sort at which Besson excels: a fresh star who undoubtedly worked hard for a relatively low price, a director (Hong Kong legend Corey Yuen) making his English-language debut and Besson's beloved south of France scenery. There's even a little scuba-diving scene that Besson, an underwater-photography junkie, shot himself.

    There's plenty to like here, especially for connoisseurs of the action genre, and there's also plenty to make you wonder whether Besson and his long-time co-writer Robert Mark Kamen scribbled their screenplay on a batch of Marseilles cocktail napkins and then lost one or two. Statham is an agreeable if cryptic presence as Frank Martin, an ex-military type turned non-violent criminal whose speciality is delivering people and packages to places in his souped-up BMW without asking questions.

    One of his packages turns out to be a woman named Lai (Shu Qi, a gorgeous Taiwan-born star of the Chinese-film world) in a burlap sack. Frank is of course a decent chap at heart, so he breaks his own rules by letting Lai out for a drink of water and a pee. On the other hand, he believes in honour among thugs, so he delivers her as scheduled to a seedy-looking American expat (Matthew Schulze, in a highly enjoyable performance) who seems to have inherited some of Brad Pitt's leftover mack-daddy threads from Fight Club.

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    That's about as far as I can take you with plot. Not because there's something to give away, but just because it doesn't make any sense after that. The slimy Brad Pitt-looking guy tries to blow Frank up for uncertain reasons, and all heck breaks loose. Lai convinces Frank to take her in, despite the fact that she's the source of all his problems. She's cute as a button, and seductive when she wants to be, as Frank discovers. Then somebody destroys Frank's lovely Mediterranean villa with surface-to-air missiles. Besson, Yuen and company seem to be striving for a screwball-comedy tone here that doesn't work at all, partly because neither of the leads talks much. Statham can't seem to decide whether to try for an American accent or stick with his own, and the lovely Shu Qi basically doesn't speak English.

    Lai tells Frank that her family and a bunch of other Chinese immigrants are being smuggled into France to be sold as forced labour. This isn't true, because her father (Ric Young) shows up in one highly confusing scene and seems to be a bad guy in league with the Schulze character. To do what, I'm not sure: smuggle human beings or control French trucking routes or fix Internet airline pricing.

    The truth is The Transporter is a much better action film than 80% of the stuff that Hollywood has produced in the last secen years, but you still can't figure out what's supposed to be happening. Yuen has a nice eye, though; aided by his cinematographer Pierre Morel, a former Besson protégé, he delivers an unconventional view of the south of France as not just a deluxe beach party but also an industrial zone of highways, loading docks and fluorescent-lit depots.

    Yuen, who has directed several Jet Li flicks, including The Enforcer and the two Legend films, helps a lot evoking the heyday of HK action film, supplying an outstanding car chase through the streets of Marseilles at the very beginning, and much of the rest of the film consists of the action set-pieces he specializes in. We get Frank as, quite literally, the guy without a hatchet in a hatchet fight. We get him, in the film's coolest scene, tangling with a pack of bad guys on the floor of a bus garage soaked with fresh oil, so nobody can stand up for more than a second (until Frank gets a pair of those mechanic's cleats on his feet, that is). We get him sledding down a mountain highway on the severed cab door of a semi-truck.

    If Statham isn't quite the equal of Li, or of Yuen's former colleagues Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, he's an able physical performer who seems to do most of his own stunt work. Would he click with the masses? We now know he did, he went on to become a superstar, but it was The Transporter that made that happen. Shu Qi, whose work stretches from Hong Kong action-erotica to Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien's work, is largely squandered here as eye candy, which was expected. But François Berléand, a veteran of French stage and screen, is terrific as the phlegmatic cop who becomes Frank's pursuer and then his accomplice, bringing a touch of Casablanca elegance to what is, at heart, slick, reckless entertainment at its finest.
  • May 20, 2009
    Dans ce premier volet on n'apprend à connaitre Frank le "transporter". On apprend sur son passé, sur sa vie, ses habitudes. Film avec de l'action, mais pas trop, beaucoup de temps mort. Les scènes de combat sont cependant excellentes. Les voix françaises me font ragé par contre ...
  • April 24, 2009
    1st one is always the best.
  • April 16, 2009
    Underworld courier-for-hire's life is complicated when he discovers his latest parcel is actually a beautiful Asian woman being sent to a nefarious American known only as Wall Street. Sturdy action film set in France has explosions, fast cars, an attractive girl and a captivatin...( read more)g action hero. The fight scenes are the best part about the film. It's a dependable, if not terribly coherent, potboiler.
  • November 6, 2009
    Only way to watch this is with a hometheater cranked all the way
  • November 5, 2009
    ...best gler lau de jason statham...rugi xtgk..
  • November 4, 2009
    jason statham is my new action hero... i want 2 c de others now... it is totally tacky action but dats be best kind rite? hahahaha
  • November 3, 2009
    Jason Statham.....kicks ass....in a suite and tie....shinny shoes....fast cars....a package and a few explosives.....He has rules.....that should be followed
  • November 2, 2009
    very good movie to watch.you should see this

Critic Reviews


October 11, 2002
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Routine and rather silly. full review

October 11, 2002
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Too much action brings the movie to a dead standstill. Why don't directors understand that? Why don't they know that wall-to-wall action makes a movie less interesting -- less like drama, more like a ... full review

October 10, 2002
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

It remains to be seen whether Statham can move beyond the crime-land action genre, but then again, who says he has to? full review

View more The Transporter reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments


  • zlon
    March 24, 2008
    Very hot action but without any real scenario. My rate is 10 for action 4 for scenario. I liked the girl very much
  • addicted2kelly
    October 29, 2007
    LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE IT,EVERYBODY SHOULD WATCH IT:D
  • LoveAndAdoreHardMaleNipples1
    May 16, 2007
    A non stop action movie from start to end loved it not your ordinary Delivery person mix in alot of Martial arts moves JS skin scenes you've got a hit.
  • bigsisshirl
    January 29, 2007
    i loved this move, and yes hes so hot
  • slowride88
    January 19, 2007
    Yes this is movie is awsome. Alot of action throught the whole thing. And Jason Statham....MMMMmmm, one word, Hot!!
  • rouwdy1
    September 15, 2006
    one hell of a action movie
  • lucywaters13
    September 6, 2006
    An Awesome film! Its a definate must see!!!
  • lucywaters13
    September 6, 2006
    An Awesome film! Its a definate must see!!!

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

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The Transporter Trivia


  • Who had roles in The Transporter, The Italian Job (2003) and Snatch?  Answer »
  • Which of these sequels is the ONLY one to star the same leading actor as it's prequel?  Answer »
  • In the beginning of which movie did Jasan Statham pick up a kid from school?  Answer »
  • in "the transporter 2", what car does jason stathams character have at the biginning of the movie?  Answer »

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