directed by Corey Yuen
written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen
starring Jason Statham, Qi Shu, Matt Schulze, François Berléand, Ric Young
Never look in the package. That’s a rule that can never be broken. It’s simple really. You don’t get emotionally involved with the cargo and morality therefore plays no part in the action of delivering the goods. Frank Martin (Statham) always followed this rule. Whenever he would transport something he always remembered to follow the rules which included not knowing the names of the personnel involved. But on one occasion he broke his rule and subsequently invited sheer chaos into his meticulous, properly ordered life.
Frank gets a job delivering a duffle bag to a man living on a massive estate. He does what he is supposed to do but on the trip to the receiver he discovers something that utterly compromises him and puts him in a most distressing position. He gets a flat and while retrieving the proper tools out of the trunk he notices the bag is squirming. After fixing the flat he closes the trunk and seems to shake off what he has seen. But Frank is not a heartless man. In fact he’s quite gentle and terribly kind to people who deserve to be treated in such a manner. So, he looks inside to reveal a young Chinese woman named Lai (Qi Shu). From that point on Frank is in it quite deep and the rest of the film focuses on his attempts to get out of it.
The fight sequences in this film all seem realistic and within the realm of the possible. There are no wires here and no walking up walls. The realism lends itself to a more natural feel to the overall potency of the various maneuvers. The action sequences are filmed with precision and economy in mind. They are well contained within the context of the film and each one has a set purpose. The stunts have a liveliness about them and all manage to express an urgency to what is taking place on screen. There is one particular fight sequence near the end that is ingenious and exceedingly entertaining in its execution and delivery. Many of the stunts, though, seem rather pedestrian as we have seen many of them before. There are odes to James Bond all over the place including gadgets and a specific stunt involving a plane and pin point sky diving.
The story itself comes off as predictable in parts and not particularly inspired in others. The performances of the leads maintain a certain level of excitability throughout and are often the only truly fascinating aspect of the film. Otherwise it’s just a rush to an obvious end that is supposed to justify the carnage that has piled up beforehand. All of the killing and maiming, all of the destruction and mayhem, lead to a final sequence of moral exactitude where the viewer is supposed to suddenly develop empathy. It doesn’t quite seem to work although there definitely is a type of sympathy at play. Frank himself is a sympathetic character. It’s easy to get behind him because despite the fact that he is accessory to criminals he is at heart a decent person who lives in accordance with a strict moral code. He is an upstanding man who happens to be excellent at driving getaway cars so that they actually manage to get away. Jason Statham did most of the driving and stunts in this film and his work in these areas is stellar.
Frank is an exceedingly meticulous person who seems to require a certain amount of order to keep himself on an even keel. In this film his perfectly codified world is shot to hell by the emergence of the girl that he was supposed to have been able to ignore. All he had to do was continue on without worrying whether she lived or she died. But his stringent morality did not allow someone to die and he made the fortuitous mistake of checking up on her. Subsequently he ran afoul of Wall Street (Schulze) and this leads to a series of unpleasant confrontations with Wall Street’s many henchmen. Much of the latter half of the film involves such fights and eventually Lai’s father Mr. Kwai (Young) becomes involved because he is working with Wall Street to do something decidedly horrible that Lai wants to stop. Mr. Kwai has no intentions on foregoing his intentions and a grave battle ultimately ensues. The final fight sequence has a great energy that is mostly played out through Frank’s dexterity and physicality. His moves and ability to elude capture have a ballet like quality to them. This is precisely what separates Jason Statham from most other action starts. He certainly brings a clear athleticism to these scenes but he is also poetic in just how and when he strikes out. There is a definite beauty to what he does and he elevates even the most rudimentary story to a higher level.
There isn’t much complexity to this story as it simply follows the course of one man who routinely finds himself surrounded with thugs he must defeat if he is going to survive. We learn only that Frank is ex-military who was honored at some point and who has been given a pension that he supplements with his fiery, exceedingly dangerous side job. He finds himself in extraordinary circumstances because he fails to live in accordance with the rules he has established to remove himself from the grisly actualities of what the jobs entail. Essentially, he is waylaid by his inquisitive nature and his inability to walk away when faced with a moral dilemma.
Frank is tailed by his old friend Tarconi (Berléand) who has long known about Frank’s activities but has turned a blind eye to them. He instinctively knows this time that Frank is involved with something far more serious and subsequently dangerous. He appears regularly in a sense to warn Frank and eventually allows him the opportunity to go about preventing a potential tragedy on his own terms. Tarconi is in his own way morally a mirror of Frank. They share the same basic moral inclinations; this is actualized by Tarconi’s behavior once he realizes what Frank is up against and the severity of his mission.
The performances in this film bring a decisive humanity to the corrosive elements that are put on the screen. Jason Statham is certainly exceedingly likable as an action hero and his work here helps solidify his reputation as the rare type who elicits tremendous sympathy for his character. There is something charmingly simple about how he is able to create a relatable character who does much more than merely punch and kick his way out of tight scrapes. He possesses a quality that is almost impossible to articulate but is clearly visible once he appears on screen. Qi Shu’s character is a bit more than a pretty damsel in distress but not much more. Lai is often presented as a prop who nevertheless does manage to display a certain tenacity especially at the end. Still, she proves to be important and provides a valuable service to Frank that helps him at a crucial time. Qi Shu plays vulnerable and manages to vacillate between outright hysteria and steely determinism. Matt Schulze is demonic at times and almost a little too intense at others. He readily conveys his character’s penchant for drama and over exaggeration. Schulze portrays Wall Street as a man who is smart in a street sense and who is driven exclusively by appetite and instinct.
Overall, this film comes off as pedestrian but manages to be carried by top notch performances that make it watchable and enjoyable. The characters all have interesting angles and they interact with one another in an entertaining way. There is nothing novel here but in the end it proves itself to be worth looking into. Ultimately the action sequences possess an authenticity that ground the film in a very tightly knit reality. There is a rawness to these sequences that leave an impression long after the final credits have rolled. Jason Statham’s character is charismatic and self-possessed without appearing to be arrogant or cocky in any way. He is very much a man who does a job well and that job happens to involve dealings with shady characters that he knows he does not want any part of. He has trained himself to remain aloof and has managed to do just that until this most recent job. His humanity lets him down for a brief moment and his humanity eventually leads to a display of mesmeric selflessness.
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