Last night, I watched The Transporter. There wasn't any baseball on. :-) In this movie, an ex-Special Forces soldier (Frank) is a getaway driver/transporter who lives by a few simple rules. I can't remember his first rule, but his second is: No Names. And the third is: Never look at the package. Only he breaks rule number three and finds a beautiful Asian woman who's trussed up and stuck inside a large bag. He still delivers her as promised to the bad guy.
Only this guy wants no witnesses and when the hero finds out he's been double crossed, he heads back to the mansion to kick some ass. The bad guy isn't there, but Frank takes out lots and lots of henchmen before stealing a car. Guess who's hiding in the back? Before you know it, our disinterested, dispassionate hero is joining the heroine's fight to stop a slavery ring. The bad guy, you see, is part of a cartel shipping men, women and children from Asia to Europe to be enslaved.
I really, really liked this movie! Lots of great action and martial arts scenes, without the icky trademark moves that some martial arts actors have--like breaking the elbow backward and other gross out stuff like this. In fact, with the music score accompanying one of the fight scenes, it was nearly humorous. I think that one of the best things about this movie is that you can tell everyone was having a good time making it.
There was just enough relationship stuff between the h/h to keep me interested, but I would have liked more. I also wish that the relationship would continue in the sequel, which I promptly added to my NetFlix queue after seeing this movie. Unfortunately, the actress's name does not appear in the credits for Transporter 2.
I didn't like the fact that the heroine screamed so much and stood by helplessly when she showed such ingenuity in other ways. She ruins her own escape attempt by screaming and there were a few other moves she made along those lines. It would have been cool if she was more his equal.
If you like action/adventure, suspense and martial arts, I can give this movie a big thumbs up. In fact, I liked it so much, that I watched it again with the commentary on to hear what the director (?) and Jason someone (hero) had to say. That was mostly uninteresting, but there were a few things I glommed onto.
First, was the fact that the Asian actress pretty much didn't speak English, but between the time she was hired for the movie and the time they filmed it, she'd learned a lot. Second, this woman had appeared in the Chinese version of Charlie's Angels for Sony Japan (?) and she wanted her character to be stronger and not a damsel in distress. The director wouldn't let her because it was supposed to be the hero's movie. Since one of my peeves was the fact she did stand around helplessly, I was like, cool, she wanted to do more.
My rating: 4.25 Stars
My neighbors across the street are having some construction done. First guess was that they were going to expand their single-car, detached garage into a double car, but that doesn't look like what's happening. From what I could see between the house and garage, the backyard is getting torn up. Maybe they're putting an extension on the house, or if it is a garage, it must be a brand new one going in the back of the house and then the driveway would curve down to the front. Interesting. This house once upon a time had a tuck under garage, but a long time ago, it was converted into a den/rec room kind of thing and the detached built. Anyway, there's been a lot of beeping whenever the bobcat backs up. I can hear it in my house when I get home from work.
Another neighbor, decided to use some loud piece of power equipment at 8:30 this morning. Sigh. He was done by 9:30 or so, and I'm not sure why he couldn't wait a little longer to make that much noise. It's mornings like this that make me wish I could find a house in an isolated spot in the mountains. :-) Or better yet, own my own tropical island.
