The Transporter (2002)

It is no secret I have a man crush on our boy Jason Statham. After he was an Olympic diver, he turned his hand to movies with a help from Guy Ritchie. He quickly found himself a niche, as that ‘b’ movie action hero. Picking up where the likes of Van Dame and Seagal left off, Statham slipped into that no nonsense, never gets his butt kicked role very easily.

The Transporter is the first in the series that really cemented his arrival to this genre. Here we have him as Frank, an ex SAS hero, who has elected for a relatively simple life in the south of France, doing the odd ‘Uber’ ride for the criminal underground.

He has 3 rules that should never be broken, but of course as soon as you hear them, you know fine well they are going to be broken, otherwise where would our story line be?

Frank’s car of choice, is a heavily modified BMW 7 series. While not the most exotic of vehicles he does take on us on a number high speed chases with many a clever stunt thrown in. But Statham excels best when he’s allowed to flex his fighting muscles and takes on a whole army of thugs by himself. While we have lots of nods to the Seagal/Van Dame fighting, you can see the odd Jackie Chan thrown in to mix it up.

But it works very well.

Personally this wasn’t my favourite Transporter outing, for that honour, I preferred the second one. This movie stands very well on its own, and does not do him any disservice.

#99 in the series