The Transporter

The Transporter (French: Le Transporteur) is a 2002 English-language French action film directed by Cory Yuen from a screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. The film was inspired by the short film series The Hire. It is the first installment in the Transporter franchise and stars Jason Statham, alongside Shu Qi, François Berléand, Matt Schulze, and Ric Young. In the film, Frank Martin, a British mercenary driver living in France, finds himself involved in a people smuggling plot.

For other uses, see Transporter (disambiguation).

The Transporter
A white man in a black suit holds two guns on a white backdrop that has a band of orange. The words "The Transporter" is overlaid in the middle of the picture.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byCory Yuen[lower-alpha 1]
Screenplay by
Produced by
  • Luc Besson
  • Stephen Chasman
Starring
CinematographyPierre Morel
Edited byNicolas Trembasiewicz
Music byStanley Clarke
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 2 October 2002 (2002-10-02) (Los Angeles)
  • 11 October 2002 (2002-10-11) (U.S.)
  • 23 October 2002 (2002-10-23) (France)
Running time
92 minutes[2]
CountryFrance[3]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20.5 million[4]
Box office$43.9 million[5]

The Transporter premiered at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles on 2 October 2002 and was first theatrically released in the United States on 11 October by 20th Century Fox, and in France on 23 October by EuropaCorp. It received mixed reviews from critics with praise for its action sequences and Statham's performances. It grossed $43.9 million worldwide and was followed by the sequel Transporter 2 (2005).

Plot

Frank Martin is a former special operations soldier and now highly skilled driver/mercenary residing in southern France whose callsign is The Transporter. He strictly follows three rigid rules when transporting:

  1. Never change the deal.
  2. No names.
  3. Never open the package.

In Nice, Frank is hired to transport three bank robbers with his black BMW 735i, but they hoist a fourth man in his car after the robbery. Explaining the extra weight will affect his precisely planned getaway, he refuses to drive until, in desperation, the leader kills one of his men who is pushed out of the car. Later, they offer more money for Frank to drive them to Avignon. He refuses the deal. The robbers escape in another car, but are foiled by their amateur driving. At Frank's villa on the French Riviera, local Police Inspector Tarconi questions Frank about the black BMW that fled the scene of the robbery, of which Frank was the getaway driver.

Lacking any real proof, Tarconi leaves. Frank is then hired to deliver a package of 50 kilograms (110 lb) to an American, Darren "Wall Street" Bettencourt. The package is loaded into Frank's trunk. While changing a flat tire, Frank notices the package moving. Realizing a person is inside, he violates his third rule in order to give the person something to drink. He discovers a woman, tied up and gagged. She attempts to escape but Frank recaptures her and returns her to the trunk along with two policemen who spot them. Frank delivers the package to Wall Street as promised and agrees to another job, transporting a briefcase. As Frank stops to buy drinks for the cops in his trunk, a bomb hidden in the briefcase explodes.

Out for vengeance, Frank returns to Wall Street's villa where he kills and wounds several henchmen. Frank then steals a car (a Mercedes-Benz S-Klasse) to get away, only to find "the package" bound and gagged in the back seat. He brings the young woman, whose name is Lai, back to his house. Wall Street visits one of his surviving men in hospital in order to determine who attacked his residence, before killing the man after discovering that Frank is alive. The next day, Tarconi arrives and asks about Frank's car, which Frank claims was stolen. Lai supports Frank's alibi by introducing herself as his new cook and girlfriend. Tarconi again leaves with no concrete evidence. Shortly after, Wall Street's hitmen fire missiles and automatic weapons down on the house.

Frank and Lai barely escape through an underwater passage to a nearby safe house. Later, while being questioned at the police station, Lai accesses Tarconi's computer to find information on Wall Street. Frank, presumed dead by Wall Street, wants to rebuild his villa and start a new life and advises Lai to do so too before she tells him that Wall Street is a human trafficker with 400 Chinese trapped in shipping containers, including her family. Lai and Frank go to Wall Street's office, where Wall Street reveals that Lai's father, Mr. Kwai, is also a human trafficker and Wall Street's partner in crime. Kwai arrives and his henchmen subdue Frank. When Tarconi arrives, Kwai and Wall Street accuse Frank of kidnapping Lai.

Tarconi has Frank arrested and locked up in the station. Realizing that Frank would not be constrained by search warrants and that he would be able to solve the case faster than the police, Tarconi agrees to aid Frank's escape as his faux hostage and releases him at the harbour of Cassis. Frank then tracks the criminals to the docks in Marseille, where they load the containers onto trucks. However, Frank is spotted and forced to fight his way through the guards, and fails to stop the trucks. He then steals an old car and makes chase at dawn before it breaks down on a small country road. He then commandeers a small airplane from a farmer and follows the highway to the trucks where he parachutes onto one of them.

After a lengthy fight, Frank manages to kill Wall Street by throwing him out of the moving truck where he is crushed by the wheels (in the American version, Wall Street is simply thrown out of the truck to be arrested), only to be ambushed by Kwai once he gets out of the truck where he is marched to a cliff edge. Frank is prepared to fight back until Lai reluctantly shoots her father. Afterwards, Tarconi arrives with the police, and they rescue the people trapped inside the two containers as he congratulates Frank on his work.

Cast

Releases

Theatrical release

The Transporter premiered in 2,573 theaters. With a production budget of $20.5 million,[4] it grossed $25,296,447 in the United States and a total of $43,928,932 worldwide.[5]

Cut and uncut releases

The film was cut to receive a PG-13 rating in the United States, and this version was also released in the United Kingdom and several other countries. Japan and France received the uncut versions. Certain sequences of violence were either cut or toned down for the PG-13 cut. These include:

  • The fight on the bus, which included Frank using a knife and knee.
  • The final fight on the highway, where Frank fights Wall Street in the truck. In the original French version, Wall Street is crushed beneath the wheels of the truck after Frank throws him from it. In the US PG-13 version, he is simply thrown out of the truck and onto the highway.

The uncut fight on the bus can be seen in the "Extended Fight Sequences" on the North American DVD, but with no sound.

The Japanese region-free Blu-ray cut of this film has the original uncut French version of the film. It also has several special features and deleted scenes. However, it does not include the North American special feature of the uncut fight scenes (with no sound). The uncut version of Transporter 2 is also included in this special boxed set.

Original Soundtrack
  1. Tweet – "Boogie 2Nite"
  2. Nate Dogg – "I Got Love"
  3. Sacario featuring Angie Martinez and Fat Joe – "Live Big (Remix)"†
  4. "Benzino – Rock The Party"†
  5. Knoc-Turn'al – "Muzik"
  6. Angie Martinez featuring Lil' Mo and Sacario – "If I Could Go!"†
  7. Tamia – "Be Alright"†
  8. Missy Elliott – "Scream AKA Itchin'"
  9. Gerald Levert – "Funny"†
  10. Hustlechild – "I'm Cool"†
  11. Keith Sweat – "One on One"†
  12. Nadia[7] – "Life of a Stranger"

† indicates that the song did not appear in the film

Original Motion Picture Score

The original score were composed by Stanley Clarke and The Replicant (for "Love Rescue" and "Transfighter").

  1. Stanley Clarke – Mission
  2. Stanley Clarke – Serenity
  3. Stanley Clarke – Franck Tries to Leave
  4. The Replicant – Transfighter
  5. DJ Pone & Drixxxé – Fighting Man
  6. The Replicant – Love Rescue
  7. DJ Pone & Drixxxé – Rockin' and Scratchin'
  8. Stanley Clarke – Interrogation with Inspector
  9. Stanley Clarke – Gives Package a Drink
  10. DJ Pone & Drixxxé – The Chase
  11. Stanley Clarke – It's All Over
  12. Stanley Clarke – Laï Snoops Around

Home media

The DVD version was released on 15 April 2003. It included fifteen minutes of extended fight scene footage and a feature-length commentary. On 23 August 2005, the film was released again in a "Special Delivery Edition". This version included all the features of the original release plus a new behind-the-scenes documentary, a making-of featurette, and a storyboard-to-film comparison. The film was also released as a part of "The Transporter Collection", which featured the first two films in the series. A Blu-ray format was released on 14 November 2006.

Reception

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 54% based on 128 reviews, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "The Transporter delivers the action at the expense of coherent storytelling."[8] At Metacritic, the film received a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[9] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[10]

Manohla Dargis, of the Los Angeles Times, complimented the action, saying, "[Statham] certainly seems equipped to develop into a mid-weight alternative to Vin Diesel. That's particularly true if he keeps working with director Corey Yuen, a Hong Kong action veteran whose talent for hand-to-hand mayhem is truly something to see."[11]

Roger Ebert wrote, "Too much action brings the movie to a dead standstill."[12] Eric Harrison, of the Houston Chronicle, said, "It's junk with a capital J. The sooner you realize that, the more quickly you can settle down to enjoying it."[13]

Notes
  1. The film was co-directed by Louis Leterrier, who was credited as artistic director.

References
  1. "The Transporter (2001)". UniFrance. Retrieved 21 July 2021.
  2. "The Transporter (15)". British Board of Film Classification. 4 November 2002. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
  3. "The Transporter (2001)". en.unifrance.org.
  4. "The Transporter (2002)". JP's Box-Office. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  5. "The Transporter". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  6. "Transporter [Original Soundtrack] – Original Soundtrack". AllMusic. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  7. "Elektra All-Stars Prepare To 'Transport'". Billboard. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
  8. "The Transporter". Rotten Tomatoes. 13 September 2002. Retrieved 2 June 2023.
  9. "The Transporter". Metacritic. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  10. "Home". CinemaScore. Retrieved 27 February 2022.
  11. Dargis, Manohla (11 October 2002). "'The Transporter'". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 15 October 2002. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
  12. Ebert, Roger (11 October 2002). "The Transporter". Chicago Sun Times. Archived from the original on 3 August 2006. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
  13. Harrison, Eric (12 November 2004). "The Transporter". Houston Chronicle. Archived from the original on 14 January 2009. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
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