Transporter, The

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The best movie Steven Seagal never made. Except that Statham, while just as marked for death, is harder to kill.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

A blending of international film sensibilities -- France meets Hollywood meets Hong Kong -- with a very cool anti-hero protagonist.

LA Weekly John Patterson

Immensely exciting and funny.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

A poke in the adrenal gland -- obeys the first law of action movie-making by quickening the heart and dazzling the eye.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Kinetic, meaningless and fun.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A thoroughly satisfying mix of mayhem and mindless fun.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

There's plenty to like here, especially for connoisseurs of the action genre, and there's also plenty to make you wonder whether Besson and co-writer Robert Mark Kamen scribbled their screenplay on a batch of Marseilles cocktail napkins and then lost one or two.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Ray Conlogue

This is a film where there isn't the slightest doubt about the dramatic outcome. But the marketing will be a cliffhanger.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This balls-to-the-walls action/adventure makes the average James Bond film look like something by Eric Rohmer. It’s high rent Steven Segal - fights, explosions, and more fights, but with a flair.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Cut above this genre's usual industrial sludge, even when the chops and kicks are too fast to follow.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Too much action brings the movie to a dead standstill. Why don't directors understand that? Why don't they know that wall-to-wall action makes a movie less interesting -- less like drama, more like a repetitive video game?

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

The plot doesn't rate as high as the quality of the bodies in fast, furious motion. What counts in The Transporter isn't the wafer-thin story about smugglers -- it's the way Martin kicks open a door, fends off a couple of axes and uses a perfectly ordinary sport shirt as a weapon.

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

What's most disappointing is the almost utter lack of humor -- In the mindless action sweepstakes, however, there's still enough here to place The Transporter above big-bang gibberish like XXX.

Chicago Reader Hank Sartin

Entertaining but forgettable action flick.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Will Statham make it as an action hero? Hard to say. His personality makes Vin Diesel look positively debonair.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Sadly, the last 40-odd minutes are essentially one fight, pushed to the point of absurdity.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Muddles through as a film so uninterested in character, it doesn't bother assigning names to them.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

A slick, sexy little package with fast cars, big explosions, dazzling locations in the south of France, a trip-hop score, and about as much plot to fill a thimble.

Miami Herald Keith Cassidy

Sreams its devotion to style over substance with slick action sequences, fast cars and breathtaking stunts.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Another big, dumb action movie in the vein of "XXX," The Transporter is riddled with plot holes big enough for its titular hero to drive his sleek black BMW through.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

If anything, The Transporter isn't ludicrous enough; only one scene (a hand-to-hand showdown in the middle of an oil slick) reaches the inspired, delirious comic heights of the best Hong Kong movies.

Variety Todd McCarthy

So second-hand and disposable is it in every respect.

The New York Times Dave Kehr

American audiences will probably find it familiar and insufficiently cathartic.

Entertainment Weekly Bruce Fretts

It's like the worst movie Jean-Claude Van Damme never made.

Village Voice Justine Elias

Kills time between car chases and martial-arts bouts with random scuba-diving footage apparently culled from producer–co-writer Luc Besson's "The Big Blue."

TV Guide Steve Simels

It takes perverse genius to make an action film this stupid.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

That the movie becomes silly isn't necessarily a problem, but it also becomes tiresome, degenerating into a series of martial arts interludes -- everyone unaccountably leaves his guns at home.