This 'Transporter' is too gabby

For high-speed action, eye-popping locales, and chopsocky fight-fests galore, watch The Transporter - on video.

The 2002 sleeper, starring Jason Statham as an ex-Special Forces guy who hardly says peep but can drive like a demon, offered an unexpected blast of mindless thrills. Directed by the Hong Kong maestro Cory Yuen and shot in the south of France, The Transporter roared along on all cylinders. The view wasn't half bad, either.

Not so Transporter 2, which transports Statham's unflappable Frank Martin to the States, to scenic but seen-too-often Miami Beach, where he drives a superturboed Audi (replacing the first pic's BMW), and where he has a temporary job chauffeuring a rich kid around.

Unhappily for little Jack (Hunter Clary), a band of Eurotrash nogoodniks headed by a guy in a bathrobe (Alessandro Gassman) and his psychokiller supermodel sidekick (Kate Nauta) have targeted the boy for an elaborate kidnapping/deadly virus scheme. (Don't ask.)

Happily for little Jack, however, his driver has promised him that no harm will come to him under his watch. And Frank Martin keeps his promises.

Frank Martin also talks too much. One of the reasons the original Transporter worked so well is that Statham - like Clint Eastwood's nameless spaghetti western hero way back when - hardly said a word. One can appear intriguingly wise and mysterious when one doesn't blab banal dialogue, but Transporter 2, alas, is full of it. The mystique of Statham's character flies out the window when he's reduced to playing word games with the kid, or counseling the boy's unhappily married mom (Amber Valletta), or cell-phoning his visiting French cop friend (Francois Berleand) to check stuff out on the computer.

Directed by Louis Leterrier (the Jet Li pic Unleashed), Transporter 2 serves up crash-and-burn car chases, blazing shootouts, and 20-against-1 martial-arts wipeouts with considerable care and choreography. But with cartoon villains and cartoon victims - the boy's father, played by Matthew Modine, is a U.S. government drug czar too busy to even know what sport his kid is into - all the lane-changing, gear-shifting, and wrong-way-on-the-freeway driving seems like a meaningless waste of time.

And waste of gas, too.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/stevenrea.

Transporter 2

** (out of four stars)

Produced by Luc Besson and Steven Chasman, directed by Louis Leterrier, written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, photography by Mitchell Amundsen, music by Alexandre Azaria, distributed by Twentieth Century Fox.

Running time: 1 hour, 28 mins.

Frank Martin. . . Jason Statham

Gianni. . . Alessandro Gassman

Audrey Billings. . . Amber Valletta

Mr. Billings. . . Matthew Modine

Lola. . . Kate Nauta

Parent's guide: PG-13 (violence, profanity, villainous supermodel in slinky underthings)

Playing at: area theaters