Transporter

Channel 4

Frank Martin (Jason Statham) is an ex-British Special Forces operative who now uses his skills to fund his French Riviera lifestyle. For a price, he will transport anything anywhere; no questions asked. He just has three rules - never change the deal, no names and never look in the package - and he sticks to them; when he's driving a getaway car with four bank robbers he has to shoot one dead because the deal said three.

Then he breaks rule three when a package he's transporting starts to move. Allowing his curiousity to get the better of him, he opens it, to reveal the beautiful Lai (Qi Shu). And now he's in trouble, as he becomes embroiled in a world where smuggled Chinese immigrants are sold into slavery and the gang, led by Darren "Wall Street" Bettencourt, want her back and him dead.

The film was directed by Hong Kong action director Corey Yuen and written and produced by Luc Besson, who was responsible for La Femme Nikita , Leon and Taxi . The action is unrelenting but also inventive, from martial arts fights galore to stunning car chases, parachute drops onto moving trucks and an underwater sequence, the latter Besson's tribute to his scuba-diving parents. Statham plays the laconic but tough hero with aplomb while Shu Qi combines beauty and grit.