Movies

Luc Besson used to be the promising young director of The Professional and The Fifth Element. Now he spends his days crafting paeans to the livery industry: Since 1998, he's written and produced four films about excitable taxi drivers and two about the world's most nimble chauffeur. Gas-guzzling adventure isn't the most sensible source of escapism during these times of record oil prices, but the Transporter series has never troubled itself with politics or current events or gravity. Jason Statham's titular motorist observes that rules are not meant to be broken, and to that end Besson doesn't fiddle with the first movie's formula—impossible car chases punctuated by impossible martial arts sequences. Cars and humans spin through the air with equally outlandish aplomb and fight choreographer Corey Yuen's use of a fire hose is far more creative than anything in the stale kidnapper plot. What does Besson care? He just wants us to tip our drivers.