While filling in for a friend, would-be special-forces super soldier for hire Frank Martin (Statham) decides to ‘take it easy’ and retire to Miami. Once transporter of kidnapped Asian hotties, now he is nothing more than a chauffer for the Billings family. Mr. Billings (Modine) the US Political drug Czar and his wife Audrey (Valletta) have a crappy marriage and need Martin to look after and drive their son Jack to and from school, and on occasion to the doctor. Life is boring for Frank but with this being a cool action movie it won’t stay that way long.

At the beginning you get to see what amounts to a 30 second commercial through a slow pan scroll of the Amazing 12-cylinder Audi A8, and $6,000 dollar wrist watch the Panerai – PAM 196, but things change and business picks up quick enough. Newcomer and pre-requisite school girl AnnaLynne (hot as hell) and 4 of her big flunkies try and ‘jack’ Frank’s new ride, thus making him late to pick up little Jack – Bad Idea! Frank apparently really hates to be late and this leads to kick ass fight scene number 1; There will be about 5 or 6 more before the credits roll so you get plenty of cool choreography.

Bodies lying everywhere, Frank leaves his butt whooping session to pick up Jack ‘promptly’ @ 3:00 to take him home to hotty. Mommy is waiting outside for little Jack and Frank to return but with the sight of Mom and Dad arguing Frank pulls in backwards so little Jack can’t see it… This endears Frank to mom and she decides to hang in the car window just enough, so Frank and the rest of us get a sneaky peek at the goods. Not too bad but since every chick in this movie is skinny as a rail the boobs suffer for it, which to this reviewer is BAD!

Mom is busy and asks Frank to come in on his day off to take the little guy to the doctor. All along there is a plot in place by a local bad guy to infect Frank’s little buddy with a deadly virus. The infection will spread to his meddling dad and his comrades in the war on drugs, thus killing all of them. This is a good thing for the cartels, not so good for the anti-drug movement. Frank breaks up their little deed ‘temporarily’ but ultimately winds up caught in the kidnapping and recovery, to become the hero once again. Why else would we watch?

Throw in at least 3 kick ass car and boat chases – 4 or 5 excellent fights and plenty of gun AND sword play and you get Transporter 2. Statham’s character is cool and the cars in this movie are un-friggin believable so go check it out.

Guy Ritchie, who recently married Madonna, wrote and directed this film. This is only his second major release with the other being Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. My impression of him as a writer especially is that he must be a big Tarantino fan as the best nutshell description of Snatch that I can think of is “an English version of Pulp Fiction“. As a director, he may have watched a few too many of Oliver Stone’s recent films. He uses some of those quick artistic edits which we so hated in movies like Any Given Sunday and Natural Born Killers.

The movie starts with the theft of a 86 karat diamond that is absolutely flawless. And the story revolves around the pursuit of this diamond and who is going to end up with it. We are introduced to a slew of really colorful characters and groups of characters. And as is the case with Pulp Fiction the substories of each of these characters gets intertwined as this diamond passes through, by and around their lives. Along the way we are treated to some really unusual situations, many of which end up being quite funny.

The pacing of the movie is sporadic. There are some slow spots. The cast does an excellent job though as you can tell alot of these guys really enjoyed playing these totally over the top characters. While watching the movie, and thinking through what I thought of it the star ratings floating through my head went as low as a 1 and as high as a strong 4. We finally decided on 3 stars. After all, just getting to see Brad Pitt get a mudhole stomped in his butt alone makes it worth the price of admission!