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Tuesday, June 1, 2010

BD impressions: Transporter 2

2:29 PM / BD Impressions / No Comments

TRANSPORTER 2 is basically summed up by a scene in which Jason Statham's Frank Martin, having realised that there is a ticking bomb strapped to the underside of his car, accelerates towards a giant magnet hanging from a crane. As the timer his zero, the car flies into the air, skimming past the magnet. The magnet detaches the bomb from the car the the crane goes up in a massive, subwoofer-rattling explosion while Frank and his trusty car sail on by without taking so much as a scratch.

Yes, TRANSPORTER 2 is very, very stupid. It's also very, very fun, knowing exactly what sort of film it is and not trying to pretend it's anything other than a big silly crowd-pleaser. It effectively strips the well-known Luc Besson-penned action formula down to the bare minimum, dispensing with any notion of character development or extraneous plotting (barring a bizarre comedic subplot involving the French police inspector from the first film) in favour of simply getting to the next ridiculous set-piece as quickly as possible. There's effectively no downtime whatsoever between one action sequence and the next - Jason Statham simply barrels his way from one location to the next, barely stopping to catch his breath, dispensing with a seemingly endless army of foes using a variety of absurd techniques. No, it ain't art, but so what? It's riotously entertaining from its first frame to the last and a welcome improvement over the original TRANSPORTER.

Image quality: It's not just the film that improves on the original - the video transfer does too. It's far from perfect, but it's a significant step up and fairly watchable for the most part, barring some individual shots which suffer from an excessive amount of aliasing. Worst affected are the 20th Century Fox logo and initial opening titles, which, given that the rest of the film is largely unaffected, makes me suspect that the problem could potentially have stemmed from inserting English-language credits from an inferior source (although shot in English and taking place in Miami, this is very much a French production). Detail isn't hugely impressive and the grain has a somewhat mushy appearance, but compared to the woeful presentation of the first film, it looks like a million bucks. 7/10

Transporter 2
studio: 20th Century Fox; country: UK; region code: B; codec: MPEG-2;
file size: 19.1 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 31.23 Mbit/sec

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