| By Fred Topel
In Theaters September 2
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The Transporter is back, and this time he hits U.S. soil. After his first adventure in the south of France, professional driver Frank Martin (Jason Statham), takes a job in Miami. But the beach weather didn’t make fighting kidnappers any easier on the actors.
“We had the windy hurricanes and the intense 100-degree weather,” Statham said. “Running around in the open sun in a black suit is not the ideal wardrobe.”
Still, he liked the idea of changing the scenery. “Some of my favorite big action movies have come out of the states like Die Hard. If we can bring it over here and give it a different flavor then that’s a great privilege that we have. We’d already done it in Europe, in the south of France, so it would be redundant to go down there and do it again so let’s go to the hot beaches of Miami and do something there. I’m very pleased about the choice of location.”
Statham practices martial arts for real, so when you see him kicking the bad guys, that’s really him. “It’s good to have an experience in martial arts and it helps Corey [Yuen]’s job. Corey is one of my favorite choreographers, a great action director, and the more experience you have the easier time he’s going to have. I couldn’t say this was any more difficult [than the first film] in terms of the fights, but we certainly exceeded in the scope of some of the stunts. At the end of the day, Corey himself is always trying to think of something new and different. In the first one we had oil fights and fights in buses and in contained spaces and this time we are using hose pipes and big sticks so there is always something different about it.”
The transporter can handle his vehicles too, and Statham got in on the driving action too. “I did as much as they’d allow me because that’s my favorite stuff. Always as a kid I dreamt of being a Formula One driver. That would have been amazing. Even as kids we used to buy the hatchback GTIs and race each other so I’ve always had a passion for being a bit of a loose cannon behind the wheel. But now I’m just a boring old man who drives very safely, but only because I get to express myself in movies. When I got to jump in the Lamborghini it was on a big airfield where the airplane was on. I took that thing around and I was doing donuts and wheel spins and they said, ‘Calm down! We are going to need new tires and we haven’t shot the first scene yet!’”
Though Transporter 2 is rated PG-13 for all the teenage boys, Statham kinda prefers the movies that show all the blood. “That sometimes doesn’t translate to a movie like The Transporter because the tone of the movie is not like, say, something Martin Scorcese would do with Casino where he puts a guy’s head in a vice. We are not trying to create gratuitous violence, but if there’s going to be some violence then I would like to see it followed through fully. There is a part where a guy tries to kick me, his leg comes through the bar and I crack his leg or break his leg, but we can’t show that because it won’t make the ratings.”
Ultimately, the transporter is not a murderer. He tries not to kill people whenever possible, but he is a professional and sometimes that goes with the job. “If I can relate it back to the first one, he doesn’t like to walk around with a gun and start killing people. It’s not what he does, it’s not his chosen weapon. If he can sustain someone’s life that’s a great thing for him. He’s not a vicious brute that wants to kill people. He wants to save as many people as he can. But if someone on the sideline happens to die as a consequence, that’s not something he can help. If he can help somebody not get killed then he will. In the first one we were always shooting people in the leg. He’s got a gun, but his chosen place wais a little bit below the waist. He’s not this crazy, unhinged psychopath with a gun.”
For all of the transporter’s physicality, Statham puts in as much time preparing the character himself. Working with creator and producer Luc Besson, they develop a guy who’s not just kicks and punches. “He came to Miami and we sat in a hotel room and we put chairs out, we sat in the car and we mapped out the scenes. Luc likes to keep things very simple and he likes those little moments to find them whether they are there or not. We have a lot of preparation with him. We’ve pretty much acted out most of the key scenes before we even get to the first day of filming. That for me is as much of an enjoyable process as the fight training. I love all of that.”
Finally, the transporter always looks sharp in his neatly pressed suit. The one time it gets dirty in action, he’s got a backup suit wrapped in plastic in his trunk. Maintaining this appearance is quite easy for Statham.
“There’s not much to take care of. There is no hair stylist on my set. You just put the suit on and you turn up. I have a haircut once every five days and that’s it. Low maintenance.”
It is important to notice that Frank Martin is not a pretty boy. “You never see him in the mirror going like this. He’s just smart. He’s not vain and always looking at himself going like this with the eyebrow. He’s not one of those kind of losers.”
Catch a ride with Jason Statham in Transporter 2 September 2. |
