Errand Boys
by Ed Owens

I have a confession to make--certain basic skills continue to elude me regardless of how hard I try to master them. For one thing, I have never been able to whistle by putting two fingers in my mouth, my own or anyone else's. You know, the way people can use their fingers (usually both pinkies or the thumb and forefinger of one hand) to make a really loud whistle? Can't do it. The blade of grass doesn't work for me either, though not for lack of trying. I've also never quite mastered chopsticks...the eating utensils, not the piano riff. Fortunately, both of those are skills that one can easily live without. Wrapping gifts, on the other hand, is a bit more problematic--just ask anyone who's ever received a hand-wrapped gift from me, a hideously misshapen blob of paper held together by seemingly randomly placed and abnormally long strands of tape. Like the inept cook who can't even boil water, my incompetence extends even to the simplest of wrapping tasks--the gift bag. Needless to say, I have considered the recent proliferation in wrapping services to be one of the greatest achievements in my lifetime, and also why Mailboxes, Etc. is my shipper of choice.

As an occasional seller on eBay, I have had more than my fair share of experiences, both good and bad, with shipping things. Everyone seems to have their preferred method, and every company seems to have their detractors. For me, Mailboxes, Etc. works because they pack it for me. I walk in, hand them the item (along with the requisite form and payment), and leave knowing that the item will arrive packaged in a way that won't frighten small children. Of course, such convenience only comes with a price. My friend, who doesn't suffer from my particular affliction, prefers the U.S. Postal Service, mostly because it's cheap. I once asked a postal worker if the USPS would wrap an item for me. She told me they didn't, but only after she stopped laughing.

So much for the USPS.

Regardless of which service you use, it's important that you know the terms and conditions of service. Some carriers will ship certain odd items that others may not. (For example, I came across the following entry under "Common Items that May Be Classified as Hazardous Materials" while glancing through the shipping rules of one particular delivery service: "Bull semen may signal the presence of dry ice or liquefied gas." The mere fact that a major delivery service would consider bull semen a common item came as quite a surprise to me.) While familiarity with every single clause of the terms and conditions may not be necessary for most people, a sense of a company's policies is generally important.

Frank Martin (aka The Transporter) only has three rules, which goes a long way towards simplifying any delivery: 1) Never change the deal, 2) No names, and 3) Never look in the package. Having only three rules apparently goes a long way, as Frank has made quite a life for himself in southern France. Of course, all of that disappears as soon as he breaks one of his own rules by looking in a burlap sack containing Lai, a young Chinese girl whose purpose as anything other than a plot point is never fully explained.

Action ensues.

There's really not much more to it than that. To be honest, I'm not sure even Luc Besson, who wrote the screenplay, can explain the plot. Many of the characters are little more than abstract ciphers, and the narrative is little more than a series of maneuvers calculated to get Frank (played with an alarming lack of charisma by Jason Statham) from one fight scene to the next, many of which are either wholesale lifted (a scene on a moving truck looks almost identical to a similar scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark) or entirely absurd (the homoerotic subtext of a scene in which Statham literally oils up during a fight is far funnier than any of the film's intentional humor). When the
fighting stops or anyone opens their mouth to speak, the result is nothing short of cringe-inducing (a line near the end is so bad, and delivered so badly, that my friend and I left the theater in tears).

The director, Corey Yuen, delivers some interesting moments (though one from the trailer, where Statham deflects an incoming rocket with a serving tray, is noticeably absent from the finished film), but ultimately not enough to sustain the film. Yuen's affinity for enclosed spaces (a tight hallway, on a bus, in a truck cab) and rapid cutting severely limits the action, leaving room for only minor variations from one scene to the next. The result is wall to wall action that rapidly becomes tedious. Unfortunately, the action is the only thing the film really has going for it.

Besides I don't think Frank would do the packaging for me.

Another botched delivery is the subject of Knockaround Guys, an odd mob movie/coming of age film hybrid that, while not entirely successful, is certainly more interesting. Matty Demaret (Barry Pepper) is trying to make a name for himself, a difficult task when your father is infamous mob boss Benny "Chains" Demaret (Dennis Hopper). When Matty fails to find opportunity outside the family, he begs his father for a shot in the family business, one his father provides, thanks to some urging from his right-hand man Teddy Deserve (John Malkovich). The job is a routine pick-up and delivery, one which goes horribly awry when Matty's friend and courier Johnny Marbles (Seth Green) loses the package, a bag containing half a million dollars in mob money.

Although proceeding from a seemingly traditional premise, the film develops in some non-traditional ways, eschewing typical resolutions in favor of a more nuanced narrative. Though essentially Matty's story, the film takes an interest in its characters, giving them room to develop in their own ways and in their own time rather than bullying its way through to its eventual climax. The result is a bit uneven, but never uninteresting.

None of this works without strong performances by the leads, and everyone seems up to the challenge. Pepper is fine in the lead, and Green brings a few subtleties to his otherwise stereotypical sidekick. Even Vin Diesel manages some nice touches, adding a sad sense of conflicted wisdom to his muscle. The best bits, though, go to Noonan as the small-town sheriff, a quietly perverse man whose motives, although not necessarily bad, are certainly questionable.

Knockaround Guys isn't a great film, but it lacks the pretension that so often sinks its bigger and louder box office brothers. I'll take its deliberate, quiet moments over the bombast of stuff like The Transporter any day.

But that's probably enough confessions for now.

©2002 Ed Owens
CineScene