Date:02/10/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/10/02/stories/2005100217520200.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Care for some pounding, wall-to-wall action?

ALL ACTION: From `The Transporter-2'

The Transporter-2 (English)

Director: Louis Letterier

Cast: Jason Statham, Alessandro Gassman, Amber Valleta, Kate Nauta, Mathew Modine and Francois Berle

British actor Jason Statham made his first appearance in 2002 as the taciturn Frank Martin, otherwise known as The Transporter, a car driver-for-hire who doesn't ask what he's asked to transport. French writer-producer Luc Besson now conjures up a second adventure, transporting our hero from Europe to Miami, U.S.

While the director last time around — Cory Yuen — still finds a place in the credits for his martial-arts choreography, the new film is helmed by Louis Letterier, the artistic director of the 2002 film, who does the seemingly impossible: moving the action a notch up to exceed the earlier product, implausible scene for scene.

Martin plays chauffeur to the young son of an American anti-narcotics agency head Jeff Billings (Modine) and his estranged wife Audrey (Valletta).

The boy is kidnapped by international crime kingpin Gianni (Gassman), who has him injected with a deadly virus for good measure and won't deliver the antidote till dad parts with a hefty ransom.

The campy action set-pieces include a fight on board a pilot-less jet as it free-falls, a sequence where Martin takes on the baddies with a lethal fire hose, and another where he defuses a bomb from a moving car. A new element this time is a sultry villainess Lola (Nauta) clad in red stilettos, a large gun and little else. The French cop (Berleand) of the first film reprises his role for no compelling reason.

It's pulse-pounding action by the bucketful — even if sense is an early causality.

A.P.