‘Transporter’ Breaks His Own Rule, All Heck Breaks Loose

This month’s Luc Besson movie plays a lot like last month’s--only better. As with “Wasabi” and a few other action titles marshaled by the prolific French producer, “The Transporter” centers on a smooth professional whose routine is interrupted by a hailstorm of bullets and a beautiful woman. The professional here is Frank Martin (Jason Statham), a former British military agent who lives on the Cote d’Azur, where he earns his keep delivering packages to whoever will pay his exorbitant fee. A man of few scruples and three exacting rules--including the dictum that he never opens the package--Martin inaugurates his potential demise when he peeks inside a squirming duffel bag. Inside the package is a ravishing hostage (Taiwanese actress Shu Qi); outside, of course, a world of trouble.

With his bullet head and cut-glass profile, Martin doesn’t initially come across as an especially appealing addition to the ranks of action heroes. Dressed in a black suit and white shirt while seated behind the wheel of his BMW, he looks a lot like a moonlighting bouncer, one of those guys who takes his shaved head and muscles a little too seriously. Until he shifts into drive, that is, and starts looking more like Clive Owens in one of those nifty Internet shorts produced by the German car company and directed by the likes of the late John Frankenheimer. Martin doesn’t just zip through the perilously winding French streets, he flies--launching the character and this enjoyable trifle on an action high it mostly sustains for the next hour.

As with many movies of this type, 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, the kind that television dramas burn through each week; 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. The paucity of dialogue makes it impossible to know if Statham could handle, say, Shakespeare (he’s done stints in the Jet Li vehicle “The One” and Guy Ritchie’s gangster features), but the actor certainly seems equipped to develop into a mid-weight alternative to Vin Diesel. That’s particularly true if he keeps working with director Cory Yuen, a Hong Kong action veteran whose talent for hand-to-hand mayhem is truly something to see.

Manohla Dargis

*

Rated R for pervasive language and some violence. In general release. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

*

Love and Redemption

Cooked in Hell’s Kitchen

For his fifth feature, Edward Burns takes a refreshing departure from romantic comedy to make one of his best, most mature films, “Ash Wednesday,” a taut, melancholy tale of brotherly love and redemption set in the darkly atmospheric Irish American underworld of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. “Ash Wednesday” has understandably been compared to Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” but it’s the fatalistic aura of Eugene O’Neill that hangs over it most strongly.

The film takes place between sunrise and sunset on Ash Wednesday 1983. Because its settings are exclusively old apartment buildings, worn taverns with lots of dark wood and an immense Victorian-era Catholic church, and because it concerns itself with the playing out of an ancient vendetta, “Ash Wednesday” could easily be set a century earlier.

Three years earlier to the day, young Sean Sullivan (Elijah Wood), tending bar, overhears three thugs in the Moran gang plotting to imminently rub out Sean’s older brother Francis (Burns). Sean reaches into a drawer, pulls out a gun and opens fire. Shortly thereafter, only Sean’s arm, identified by his wristwatch, turns up in the East River. In an instant, Francis straightens out his life and looks after Sean’s widow (Rosario Dawson) and infant son.

For all its brooding quality, “Ash Wednesday” is suspenseful and ultimately unpredictable, with a sterling ensemble cast.

David Shire’s evocative score and Russell Fine’s moody camerawork blend seamlessly to create a drama that beautifully expresses Burns’ abiding concerns of brotherhood, Catholicism and morality that is as embracing as it is seductively destructive.

Kevin Thomas

*

Rated R for pervasive language and some violence. Exclusively at the Fairfax Cinemas, Beverly Boulevard at Fairfax Avenue, L.A., (323) 655-4010. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

*

In the Scary ‘Below,’

It’s Enigmas Ahoy

At first glance, director David Twohy’s “Below” has the makings of a B-movie horror classic. Somewhere in the Atlantic during the Second World War, the crew of the U.S. ship Tiger Shark happens across three survivors from a downed British ship. Among the rescued are two sailors and an inquisitive female nurse (Olivia Williams) whose very presence provokes consternation among the crew. The men think she foretells bad luck, and so she does--with shivers and appreciable intelligence.

Written by Darren Aronofsky (“Pi”) and Lucas Sussman, along with horror veteran Twohy, “Below” has a slamming first hour. As Ian Wilson’s camera darts over Charles Lee’s spookily atmospheric sets, enigmas sprout like mushrooms. A turntable spins uncontrollably (“Sing, Sing, Sing” it commands), and ghostly faces materialize with the persistence of unwelcome guests. The captain (Bruce Greenwood) twitches with the certainty of the condemned while everyone else--Matt Davis, Holt McCallany, Scott Foley, Zach Galifianakis, Dexter Fletcher, Jason Flemyng and Nick Chinlund--wanders about with the haunted look of men who can’t find a way out. Every bang makes them jump (us too).

If “Below” had been released in 1943--the year of its story--it would have come in at an agile 70 minutes instead of a protracted 104. Twohy has said he studied the work of Jacques Tourneur, the director of sleek 1940s thrillers such as “Cat People.” You can see Tourneur’s imprint on “Below,” which makes better use of shadow than most neo-noirs, as well as that of his three-time producer Val Lewton, whose 1943 “The Ghost Ship” may be another inspiration. A legendary figure, Lewton had a genius for restraint--including brisk running times. One look at “Below” and he would brought out the scissors, knowing as he did that the key to great horror isn’t how much you explain but how little.

Manohla Dargis

*

Rated R for language and some violence. In general release. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

*

Mob Rule Once Again

in ‘Knockaround Guys’

Dennis Hopper and John Malkovich as Italian American Brooklyn crime bosses? After three-plus seasons of “The Sopranos” and dozens upon dozens of gangster epics, casting two of cinema’s iconic weirdos as mob royalty in “Knockaround Guys” seems ... what? ... too reductive, too shallow, too ... exotic? Certainly, Malkovich’s portrayal of mob lieutenant Teddy Deserve (!) and his lacquered swagger represent the only thing here that you haven’t seen a hundred times before.

Brian Koppelman and David Levien, making their directorial debut after writing the screenplay for 1998’s cult-fave poker flick, “Rounders,” seemed to have started out with an unusual premise. Matty Demaret (Barry Pepper), son of crime czar Benny Chains (Hopper), is trying to get a job as a sports agent but is rebuffed because of his family ties. With Matty’s own real-world prospects narrowing, he asks his dad and “Uncle Teddy” for a chance to prove himself by supervising what seems a routine transfer of illicit cash. He gets three buddies: faux swinger Chris (Andrew Davoli), muscleman Taylor (Vin Diesel) and grubby gofer Johnny Marbles (Seth Green). While flying the bag of swag from Spokane to New York, Johnny stops to refuel in Montana, where the sight of a local lawman (Tom Noonan) spooks him and the scheme goes awry. Everyone carries out assigned roles with conviction, even Diesel and Green, who fit into the confines of this genre better than one would expect.

Gene Seymour, Newsday

*

Rated R, for violence, language and some drug use. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes. In general release.

*

‘Pokemon 4Ever’ Expands

the Line of Collectibles

Except for what we’d have to call Shredded Wheat Man, a monster photographically superimposed on a Japanese anime-style world, there isn’t much to “Pokemon 4Ever.” There’s a new creature, Celebi, the “voice of the forest” who is chased into the future world of Ash, Misty, Brock and Ash’s poke-pal Pikachu trying to evade a dangerous Pokemon hunter. What he finds is even more dangerous. What kids will discover is a new collectible. What parents will suspect is that they’re watching a 76-minute commercial.

John Anderson, Newsday

*

Rated G. Running time: 1 hour, 76 minutes. In general release