The Transporter

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * )

Call it the international movie, a recent arrival that mixes and tries to match the Bond flicks' luxury European locations and big boys' toys with chop-socky's martial arts flash.

Jason Statham (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) stars as Frank Martin, a former British SAS commando now known as the Transporter. He'll move anything for a price and under his rules: never change the deal, no names, never look in the package. You need those sort of paydays to pay the mortgage on a villa on the French Riviera.

And from the first few frames Martin shows he means business. He's driving the getaway BMW for a gang of bank robbers. Four baddies jump into the car; Martin was hired to drive for three. He shoots the fourth man and his professional honour is satisfied.

Now it's all cars leaping from tall buildings (okay, a bridge) on to a truck-trailer, our hero parachuting on to speeding vehicles, weapons of mass and individual destruction, high drama underwater. This is what happens when director Corey Yuen, the Hong Kong martial arts movie specialist in his English-language debut, gets together with writer-producer Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Professional, The Fifth Element and other films beginning with The).

The climax comes when Martin breaks one of his own rules and looks in the bag, a large duffel bag he is transporting, and finds it contains a beautiful young Chinese woman named Lai (Qi Shu). This lands him in a conspiracy involving gangsters from Nice and human slaves from China, which neatly ties up those two loose ends from the first paragraph.

DVD features: movie (92min); commentary by actor Jason Statham and producer Steven Chasman; extended scenes; Making Of ...

DVD, video rental: May 14