Transport some more stoopidity

I don’t know if Jason Statham, the star of “Transporter 2,” is a real

martial artist, but he’s got more and better moves than a lounge

lizard with a martini. Faster than an ATM sucking out fees from your

account, meaner than a skeeter you’ve only managed to pull one wing

off of, he’d probably sell his soul to the devil, but the devil

couldn’t afford him.

“Transporter 2” opens in an enclosed garage structure that’s wet

for unknown reasons. Stuck off to the side is an Audi A8 all by its

lonesome. The driver approaches and is accosted by various and sundry

carjackers, all of whom he quickly dispatches without a hair out of

place (it helps that he has little hair), and without a wrinkle on

his freshly pressed shirt.

This 90-or-so minute ode to the Audi A8 is off and running as

Statham drives through walls, off buildings, in the air, and

generally defies gravity along with most of the other laws of nature

and physics and common sense while suffering nary a scratch on his

auto.

Statham kicks butt, doesn’t take names, and has more Jackie Chan

moves than Jackie Chan.

The most pretentious, overrated piece of recent celluloid to hit

the screen in recent memory was “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

Overrated, overlong, and stuffed with some of the hokiest effects

in cinematic history, this disaster was everything a martial arts

film should never have been.

“Transporter 2” is.

Its plot is hilarious, making “Gilligan’s Island” seem like

“Citizen Kane” -- another hideously overrated film. The action is

amazingly contrived, the dialogue rarely aspiring to anything greater

than two-syllable words generally delivered monosyllabically.

And it works.

This is a first class dumb-and-dumber flick that doesn’t want you

to think, won’t allow you to think, and probably suppresses any

transient brain cells that attempt to think.

The plot -- stolen no doubt from a beginning screenwriters

textbook -- involves, if I recall, something about a virus that’s

supposed to wipe out lots of people. Only the bad guy has the cure,

which our hero, Frank, has to find. After that, Frank has to kill all

the bad guys, destroy their labs, rescue the kidnapped boy and save

the world.

All by his lonesome.

Piece of cake.

Just another day on the job for the latest recombinant version of

James Bond, Rambo, the Terminator, Dirty Harry and Joan of Arc.

Some bad dudes and dudettes are on his tail, though. You’ve got

yer psycho Colombian with eyes a-buggin’, some assorted assistants

with varying and vagrant accents, and the queen wacko herself.

Skinnier than a dust bowl fence rail, made up more than a circus

clown, and wearing clothing that look like hand-me-downs from a

budget adult shop, prances she does in her omnipresent high heels.

Raging with a major and continual case of PMS, and in desperate need

of buckets of Midol, she kills everything in sight and a few things

that aren’t. It’s up to our hero to stop her, and like every other

bad guy in this ongoing cartoon, the deed is done. Slowly.

Graphically.

Now it’s after the main bad guy, Gianni. He’s not very nice. Don’t

remember what Gianni’s infected people with, but its name is longer

than Jean Claude Van Damme. Frank manages to get on the jet in which

he’s fleeing, take control, lose control and crash the sucker into

the ocean.

These last few minutes have got to be just about the stoopidest

bit I’ve ever seen on film. The plane is floating around in more

directions than a Gaylord Perry spitter. Whoever was hanging onto the

strings the model was attached to must have been convulsing while

they were filming. This was as dumb as they come.

Like Shane, Frank cruises off into the sunset having delivered

everyone from evil.

The sequel that will no doubt appear next year? Bring it on. I

like ‘em stoopid.

* UNCLE DON reviews B-rated movies and cheesy musical acts for the

Daily Pilot. He can be reached by e-mail at

o7reallybadwriting@yahoo.comf7.