In short: See this movie. NOW!! Loved it. Awesome. As action movies go, this was off the hook.

Written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen
Directed by Corey Yuen

CAST:
Jason Statham Frank Martin
Qi Shu Lai
François Berléand Tarconi, the detective.
Matt Schulze Wall Street, the guy who gives Frank the assignment in the beginning of the movie that gets Frank into trouble. (He played Vince in The Fast and the Furious, the bearded member of Vin Diesel’s gang who was antagonistic towards Paul Walker.)
Ric Young Mr. Kwai, Lai’s father. (He played Bruce Lee’s father in Dragon The Bruce Lee Story.

Frank Martin is a man who delivers packages between people of questionable repute without asking questions. The first scene shows him on one of his assignments, and sets up how he approaches his work with a sick amount to detail and to three simple rules:

1. Don’t change the rules.
2. No names
3. Don’t open the package

This first scene shows the manner in which he adheres to these rules, and how he reacts to others who don’t abide by them, sets up his personality and his professionalism, and provides our first glimpse into how good he is in an ELECTRIFYING car chase through the streets of France. Much as one of Luc Besson’s other films, The Professional, the plot point that sets up the conflict of the movie, and sets Frank up against a group of smugglers is when an assignment given to him comes with a unique complication that I won’t spoil for you, and how he is forced to respond to it.
---Qi Shu’s Lai is fun to look at. She starts off as a seemingly Typical Woman in Jeopardy Who Exists Only to be Saved by the Hero, but eventually reveals that she’s both an assertive and pro-active part of the plot who doesn’t merely respond to the events in the story, but is responsible for settting them in motion as well. Oh. And by the way, Qi Shu is HOT.
---The action scenes were excellent, while I don’t know if Jason Statham is a trained martial artist, judging from the way the scenes are filmed, and from the flexibility of his legs, I’d say he’s either the real thing, or has done some serious stretch training for the film. An acquaintance told me after the screening that Luc Besson was only interested in choreographing the action scenes, and left the drama and character scenes to Robert Mark Kamen. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, there should be a law passed saying the Luc Besson should choreograph ALL martial arts action movies. Like Jackie Chan, Besson utilizes seemingly mundane settings, and props and devices therein in his action sequences, and one scene in particular involving vats of grease reminded me a bit of that Jackie Chan movie in which he’s a racecar driver.

NITS, NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS:
Why does Frank give Lai a drink when he first finds her? I guess perhaps they wanted to imply that he wasn’t a total hardass, and had a soft side, but the first thing I thought was, "Oh great, now she’s gonna have to pee." Well, guess what? That’s what happens?

When Frank puts a rope around Lai’s neck so she can relieve herself without running off, was there ANYONE who didn’t know exactly what she’d do?

When Frank tries to convince Tarconi that Wall Street and Tarconi are slave smugglers, Tarconi asks how he knows, and Frank says that Lai told him. Tarconi then says she shouldn’t be trusted her because she’s a kook. For some reason, Frank doesn’t also tells Tarconi that Wall Street admitted that he was smuggling people.

When Tarconi gets out of a car trunk in the movie, and looks exasperatingly at the uncomfortable place he was just forced to stuff himself into, I was expecting him to say, "And why does it smell like pee in there?"

To get more info on this movie, go to the Internet Movie Database and do a title search on the film, or go directly to the Database’s entry for this film at http://us.imdb.com/Title?0293662 There are production stills and the trailer.

Above where it says, "When Frank tries to convince Tarconi that Wall Street and Tarconi are slave smugglers", it should be "Wall Street and Mr. Kwai".

Staham has trained in the martial arts, altho' I haven't heard what style.

Frank is likely to remind a lot of people familiar with Japanese animation and comics, as it did me, with the character Bean Bandit. Created by Kenichi Sonoda Bean originally appeared in the video release Riding Bean. Bean, a driver for hire who will get anything anywhere no questions asked, acts as getaway driver for some bank robbers, who later set him up to be the fall guy for a kidnapping. The video also includes a subplot about a cop who is obsessed with catching Bean who he has been tailing for years. Sonoda would later reuse Bean in his manga Gunsmith Cats(available in North America from Dark Horse), a series which focuses on the adventures of a much changed version of Rally Vincent, who appeared in Riding Bean as Bean's partner. Like Frank Bean is a big tough dude who you do not want to get in a physical battle with.

A few of the special effects were distracting, most noteably the "tracer" effect used in some of the shooting scenes. The bullets zipping thru the water during the battle at the warehouse were obviously CG, while the strange curving flightpath of the missiles fired at Frank's house looked wrong.

It seems that its not only US made films that have product placement these days. The Pepsi products in some shots were obvious, while I would assume Tiger Beer is some brand found in Europe since it appears prominently in several scenes. Frank's quick dash into a pharmacy for headache tablets later in the film looks like it might have been intended as a placement for a French pharmacy chain.

The rotating licence plates on Frank's car remind one of James Bond's Aston Martin of days gone by. I wonder how much that option costs from the factory? :-)

Ric Young needs either a better hairdresser or a better hairpiece maker, as his hair looked very odd.

Rule No 1 is the deal is the deal. Don't change the deal.