The titled transporter, Jason Statham in the role of Frank Martin, is going places, not only in moving from locale to picturesque locale on most types of transportation but in his future with the all- American favorite genre of action-adventure. Statham is running on Diesel fuel from the time he enters the picture to the moment he makes France safe for escargot. As a transporter who zips about town pretty quickly, he's something like New York cab drivers, with the one exception that he knows where he's headed. Give him an address in Nice or Marseilles or Grenoble and he'll take your package there. He'll even carry people as he does in the adrenalin-pumping opening scene as driver of a getaway car for some awfully stupid-looking masked bandits (they look like the guys in the Coke ad who surrender to the cops in return for a sip of the beverage). Liking simplicity, he doesn't much go for the complexity of carrying a live package, however, a duffel bag that turns out to bear a sexy Chinese woman, Lai (Shu Qi), who makes an honest man out of him as women tend to do.

The picture is all Statham's. Borrowing from Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," Cory Yuen ("Lethal Weapon 4") directs Statham who heretofore appeared in more offbeat roles in Guy Ritchie's enigmatic "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and in Ritchie's near-incomprehensible "Snatch." The transporter not only drives BMW's and Mercedes, but is at ease hijacking a private plane, swimming in the deep, and dodging Uzi-style bullets and even bazooka shells, his desire to live fueled by Shu Qi's character Lai. Lai's wicked father, Mr Kwai (Ric Young), working with the smirking villain, Wall Street (Matt Schulze), is smuggling Chinese people into the Cote d'Azur for purposes other than playing the casinos. Francois Berleand turns up now and then with a two-day growth as Inspector Tarconi, who also has a hand in making Frank Martin see the evil of his ways.