Frank Martin’s small-screen exploits still a road to nowhere.
Review by Brandon Wolfe
Filmmaker Luc Besson, that prolific purveyor of Euro-junk action thrillers, seems hellbent on making a cottage industry out of The Transporter. The original 2002 film, the coming-out party for Jason Statham’s tenure as one of filmdom’s core badasses, was a surprise hit and spawned two sequels, with a reboot-flavored third on the way. Besson also launched The Transporter as a TV series in 2012, to relatively little fanfare. Besson, famously a voracious fan of dollar signs (we didn’t get those nonsensical Taken sequels for the sake of art), clearly works under the impression that there is a wealth of profit potential in this franchise, yet the material at the core of The Transporter empire is so thin that the amount of stretching Besson is attempting to do with it threatens to tear it apart.
Case in point, Besson has now completed a second season of Transporter: The Series and the franchise’s limitations are evident all over this latest batch. In the Transporter films, Statham portrayed Frank Martin, a superhumanly skilled driver who works as a sort of underworld courier, either transporting valuable materials for shady clients or operating as the getaway driver on high-risk criminal operations. Frank is a very fastidious man, who is extremely fussy about the state of his vehicle and his black-suit wardrobe, and stringently adheres to a set of rules that he demands both he and his clients follow to the letter. Though Frank operates in the criminal realm, he’s not an evil man, so much as morally neutral. He’s a consummate professional, though one not unwilling to get down and dirty when jobs go sideways, as they often do.
There was never much to Frank as a character in the three Transporter films beyond his OCD nature and badass efficiency, but Statham, with his pub-bruiser charm, made him at least seem like an interesting protagonist. The juxtaposition of Frank’s finicky tendencies and his bone-crushing skill set was something Statham played with aplomb, locating the sweet spot between gentleman and thug. The problem with the Transporter franchise has always been that there is precious little to the whole operation besides Statham’s rough-hewn appeal, glimpses of European scenery and some nifty car-chase sequences, and the TV series visibly strains under those limitations. Getting three movies out of Frank Martin was already a tall order. Getting an ongoing television series out of him is a fool’s errand.
Transporter: The Series replaces Statham with Chris Vance, and that alone is enough to derail the train. The Transporter films only got by due to Statham’s unique tough-guy charisma, so removing him from the equation and replacing him with someone lacking all the qualities that Statham brought to the character is a fatal hindrance. Vance seems to think he’s playing 007 rather than Frank Martin, giving the character a softer, uncharacteristically debonair aura while lacking the intimidation factor that Statham exuded in waves. Even Vance’s look is off, with his well-coiffed hairstyle; Frank Martin even having hair feels like a huge miscalculation. Statham’s appeal is distinctively his, but casting Vance in this role indicates that no one behind the scenes either understood what it was that made the character work or cared about trying to adhere to it as much as was possible.
Not that it might have mattered. There simply isn’t enough meat to The Transporter as a franchise for a multi-episode series to function, at least not without a lot more thought being put in than the makers of this series are clearly willing to expend. Frank receives a new female partner in the form of Caterina Boldieu (Violante Placido), whose life he’s hired to save in the season’s opening scene and who then inexplicably decides to join forces with him simply so there’s an attractive female on hand. Also returning from Season 1 is Dieter Hausmann (Charly Hübner), Frank’s loyal mechanic (the Frank Martin of the movies would never allow nor require anyone other than himself to touch his car, but a TV show needs its secondary characters). Most enjoyably is the return of François Berléand as Inspector Tarconi, the character he portrayed in the films. Tarconi’s peculiar friendship with Frank was always the one bit of character-based amiability that this unshakably meat-and-potatoes franchise had at its disposal, so it’s nice to see that relationship continue, even if it’s with an inferior version of Frank.
Transporter: The Series is perhaps even junkier than much of Besson’s largely disreputable film oeuvre. The action sequences and car stunts are far less impressive here than in the films, and the series lacks the wit and intelligence necessary to get it over that hump. That Besson, whose low-rent sensibilities have come to define him much more than his earlier, richer work, would consider this to be good enough is hardly surprising. What is surprising is that Frank Spotnitz, the second-in-command on The X-Files during its entire run, is a major creative force on this series, acting as both executive producer and writer. I guess for all Franks associated with this series, the mindset is that a job’s a job.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJohnFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe at @BrandonTheWolfe.
Comments