The 2002 film The Transporter was an enjoyable, efficient action movie. It introduced Jason Statham, previously of Guy Ritchie's mob comedies, as a capable action lead. That film wasn't anything approaching realistic, but sometimes action movies, when they have the right tone of tongue-in-cheek humor, are better if they're not realistic. It was a lot of fun, and so is its sequel, to a point.

That point comes late in the movie, in its final action scene, when the technology fails to bear the weight of its absurdity. It involves a plane crashing into the ocean bearing two fighting men; one is Statham, and the other is the bad guy. They continue fighting, undeterred by the spinning, pilotless plane, and even hitting the ocean doesn't do much except make them wet. And I'm all for this kind of ridiculous stuff, but for one thing: the effects were terrible. Spin a plane around, have your fighters dancing around its interior like Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding, but make it look somewhat plausible, like it might be a real plane, not a Photoshop mockup. I know I might sound silly asking for realism from a film where a particularly good driver can detach a bomb from the underside of his vehicle with a barrel roll and a handy crane hook, but there's a point up to which absurdity works and beyond which it does not.

But up to that point, it was a lot of fun. Statham is Frank Martin, the titular transporter. In the first film, he was a professional and capable driver who lived by a set of rules, and things only got complicated for him when he broke them. Here, he seems semi-retired; he's in Miami, and he's taken a temp job as a different kind of courier: he drives the son (Hunter Clary) of Billings, the US government's drug czar (Matthew Modine in a particularly bad performance), to school and back. He has a natural connection with young Jack Billings, and he has developed a different set of rules, the most important of which is that he will never let anything bad happen to the boy. Of course, there are bad guys about, led by Gianni (Alessandro Gassman), who has a seemingly simple nefarious plan that turns out to be a lot more complicated as the film progresses.

Gianni sends his girlfriend Lola (the skeletally disgusting model Kate Nauta, who looks like she doesn't have enough muscle on her bones to propel herself forward) and a Russian scientist (Jason Flemyng) to Jack's doctor's office in what appears to be a kidnapping attempt, but Frank foils their plans in a hail of bullets and exploding oxygen canisters. But Lola quickly recovers and kidnaps both Jack and Frank at gunpoint, in a scene that makes it look like Frank's involved in the kidnapping. The only person who trusts him is Billings's emotionally abused wife Audrey (Amber Valletta), and she attempts to help Frank get the boy back. It turns out the kidnapping is just a red herring, but I won't divulge how or why.

The film is basically a series of action scenes, each one attempting to up the ante set by the previous one. Action-movie formula requires an opening scene that's mostly unconnected to the rest of the film, showing off the main character's abilities; in the one here, Frank kicks the crap out of and provides homework advice to some would-be carjackers. The doctor's office scene is fun, if ridiculous, and many of the ones following, including the aforementioned bomb-removal technique, elicited loud laughter from the audience. A combination jet ski/bus chase pushes the envelope a little bit farther. There are many fight scenes, usually with Frank facing off against multiple opponents, but for the most part they have a Jackie Chan feel to them, concentrating on the ingenuity and physical prowess instead of on the broken bones and blood.

And despite how silly it all was, director Louis Leterrier nearly pulled it off, with ample help from Statham's understated performance and action-star moves, Corey Yuen's fight choreography, and some nice supporting turns by Valletta and Francois Berleand. The ending sinks the enterprise (both literally and figuratively) with bad FX and subpar action-movie one-liners. The final action scene shouldn't be the best time to take a bathroom break, but you'll leave with a better opinion of this film if you do.