MOVIE REVIEW

By Manohla Dargis

This month's Luc Besson movie plays a lot like last month's--only better. As with "Wasabi" and a few other action titles marshaled by the prolific French producer, "The Transporter" centers on a smooth professional whose routine is interrupted by a hailstorm of bullets and a beautiful woman. The professional here is Frank Martin (Jason Statham), a former British military agent who lives on the Côte d'Azur, where he earns his keep delivering packages to whoever will pay his exorbitant fee. A man of few scruples and three exacting rules--including the dictum that he never opens the package--Martin inaugurates his potential demise when he peeks inside a squirming duffel bag. Inside the package is a ravishing hostage (Taiwanese actress Shu Qi); outside, of course, a world of trouble.

With his bullet head and cut-glass profile, Martin doesn't initially come across as an especially appealing addition to the ranks of action heroes. Dressed in a black suit and white shirt while seated behind the wheel of his BMW, he looks a lot like a moonlighting bouncer, one of those guys who takes his shaved head and muscles a little too seriously. Until he shifts into drive, that is, and starts looking more like Clive Owens in one of those nifty Internet shorts produced by the German car company and directed by the likes of the late John Frankenheimer. Martin doesn't just zip through the perilously winding French streets, he flies--launching the character and this enjoyable trifle on an action high it mostly sustains for the next hour.

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As with many movies of this type, the plot doesn't rate as high as the quality of the bodies in fast, furious motion. What counts in "The Transporter" isn't the wafer-thin story about smugglers, the kind that television dramas burn through each week; it's the way Martin kicks open a door, fends off a couple of axes and uses a perfectly ordinary sport shirt as a weapon. The paucity of dialogue makes it impossible to know if Statham could handle, say, Shakespeare (he's done stints in the Jet Li vehicle "The One" and Guy Ritchie's gangster features), but the actor certainly seems equipped to develop into a mid-weight alternative to Vin Diesel. That's particularly true if he keeps working with director Cory Yuen, a Hong Kong action veteran whose talent for hand-to-hand mayhem is truly something to see.

Rated R for pervasive language and some violence. In general release. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.