**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras C
SDE DVD – Image B- Sound A+ Extras C
starring Jason Statham, Shu Qi, Francois Berleand, Matt Schulze
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Cory Yuen
by Walter Chaw That Cory Yuen's The Transporter is unapologetically misogynistic, badly plotted, and poorly acted isn't so much a criticism as a recognition that one of Jet Li's favourite Chinese directors has made a French film in many ways identical to the chop-socky/gun-fu flicks China was churning out throughout the eighties and into the nineties. Where the film fails is in its resemblance, ironically, to Yuen's own work on The Bodyguard from Beijing (and even the awful Women on the Run), and in its uncomfortable similarity to John Woo's Hong Kong output–a cribbing owed as much to Yuen as producer Luc Besson, who has made it something of a closet industry in his action films to borrow liberally from The Killer and Hard-Boiled (and, in this particular instance, A Better Tomorrow II). The Transporter is too slick and winking, then–a post-modern take on the "heroic bloodshed" genre that already had one foot in self-satire, with the other dancing in operatic melodrama. The foot shouldn't be keeping time with a techno beat; it should be tapping to a lonesome harmonica.
Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is the titular "transporter," a man of few words and three rules who makes his living transporting various packages for various Gallic lowlifes around France in his beamer. When he breaks one of his own rules ("never open the package") only to discover that his latest parcel is lovely Shu Qi in a duffel bag, all hell breaks loose. Eh, it doesn't matter what the movie is about. François Berléand leaves the strongest impression as a wizened French inspector on Frank's trail.
With a few genuinely exciting action sequences (including an axe battle that is memorable for its stupid energy), and with Statham proving that a talented action choreographer and director can make even Keanu Reeves look like a champion martial artist, The Transporter appeals in fits and starts. It is high-spirited when it's not talking, stumbling badly when it allows itself to humiliate Shu Qi (a genuinely talented martial artist, as it happens), casting her first as a helpless object, then as an S&M fantasy, then as a housemaid, then as a prostitute (Madonna/whore syndromes have seldom been as clearly illustrated), all the while parading a string of men to slap, betray, and call her unkind names. The picture is a puerile fantasy of revenge and woman-fear boiled to its barest elements, with a last-act twist that verges dangerously on exploitive–as if the rest of the film weren't exploitive enough. Still, it's an interesting snarky tribute of sorts to the best of Woo and Ringo Lam that reminds mainly that there may never again be directors like them in a time and place so peculiarly suited for their talents, their work already parody almost as soon as they pass into legend.
Fox presents The Transporter in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and pan-and-scan video transfers on opposite sides of a DVD-10. A scene in the fifth chapter with a bit of burning paper in the middle of a dark bar clarifies the quality of the disc's colour separation, lack of bleed, and overall sharpness. Hues are vivid in the outdoor scenes and shadow levels deft and subtle. Black is pitch with no hint of digital fragmentation, even in the middle of the harshest firestorms. The fullscreen appears adept as well, the relative quality of the two transfers laudable for a film that didn't perform very well at the box office. A 5.1 Dolby Digital mix is extraordinarily agile with a pleasing fullness in all channels. Its prologue, and the stray explosion now and again, test the 0.1 channel while a chase through the woods features crackling leaves and bubbling streams in enough abundance to cause glances over the shoulder.
A feature-length yakker with Statham and producer Steven Chasman is one of the more useless chat-tracks in recent memory. Lots of long lulls punctuated with inane commentary that sometimes verges on the racist at worst, patronizing at the least (Chasman: "She's really delicate…like a little China doll;" "She was working with a director named Ringo Lam"–Statham: "She learned really quickly, it was amazing"). Statham, either stoic or sleepwalking depending on how much you like him, reveals a wit so dry it's neither sharp nor particularly amusing. There are 10-minute stretches where the only commentary is the pair laughing at the film in an admiring sort of way. Yep. Three extended fight sequences play out with optional commentary from Statham, Chasman, and a roughly-translated Cory Yuen (but only on the widescreen side of the disc)–each of them essentially the same as from the film but with a little extra of the old horrorshow ultraviolence. It's not really enough of a difference to cause much of a wrinkle, highlighting how narrow the gulf has become between the "R" and "PG-13" ratings in modern film.
The fullscreen side of the platter includes a 12-minute "Making of" docu that follows the basic obsequious doctrine of B-roll horsechuck, which generally airs as filler on those movie channels that I don't get. A few behind-the-scenes shots are pretty much what you'd expect to see: Yuen holding the camera and gesturing at Statham, and folks talking about how it wasn't too tough shooting a film where no one ever understood what anyone else was ever saying. Most interesting is the extent to which everyone talks about Luc Besson, causing one to wonder if The Transporter isn't to Besson what Poltergeist is to Spielberg. The Transporter's theatrical trailer rounds out the disc. Originally published: May 28, 2003.
THE DVD – SPECIAL DELIVERY EDITION
by Bill Chambers Just in time to whet appetites for Transporter 2 (which, like the sequel to The Terminator, drops that pesky "the"), Fox reissues The Transporter on DVD in, Lord love us, a "Special Delivery Edition." All of the previous Special Edition's content returns, but gone is the pan-and-scan version of the film proper, substituted with a phenomenal–or, at least, phenomenally loud–5.1 DTS track. Alas, combined with the addition of a 35-minute making-of and a 10-minute "Inside Look" featurette promoting Transporter 2, this improved but ultimately superfluous listening option costs the image a significant amount of fine/shadow detail. Why Fox chose to cram everything onto a dual-layer platter instead of making this a 2-disc set is beyond me–not that the new supplements warrant inclusion in the first place. Directed by François Goetghebeur, "Behind the Scenes… The Transporter" overdubs the French and Chinese members of the cast and crew in English not only for their junket-ready talking-heads, but also during B-roll–something that forces the hapless rent-a-ventriloquists to start acting. It's ridiculous and squirm-inducing in equal measure, and it brings nothing fresh to the table besides. (On the other hand, Christophe Trembley's Transporter 2 EPK shows how dangerous it is to actually let actors speak for themselves.) Trailers for Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior and Fox's All-Access line round out the DVD.
DVD – 92 minutes; PG-13; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; Fox
SDE DVD – 92 minutes; PG-13; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English DTS 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox
