Standing on the lonely steps of the cruel movie theater, I felt like an impoverished Dickensian orphan as I handed over my last with the words, "Please, sir, may I have a ticket for Transporter?" The clerk took my , refrained from replying "A ticket? You want a ticket?" in a boisterous British accent or breaking out into song, and then handed this poor, destitute college student an admission ticket.

Having not been able to financially rationalize attending a movie in a theater for several months, I was greatly anticipating the film. So I settled into the theater seat, feeling as if the orphan had come home at last.

I would have been better off receiving the proverbial bowl of cold gruel. (For those of you who recognize that there is some sort of extended cinematic allusion going on in the preceding paragraph, but cannot quite pin it down, may I suggest renting the 1968 musical Oliver! For those of you who couldn't care less, please continue reading.)

Transporter is about a retired soldier, Frank Martin, played by Jason Statham, who is living as a foreigner in France, and transports items for a living, no question asked. His clients are usually criminals, so to protect himself Frank devises a series of "rules of transporting." One of the most important rules is: never open the package. When Frank is hired to transport a package that begins to wiggle, he opens it to find a young woman, Lai (Qi Shu), and subsequently incurs the deadly wrath of his employer.

I was familiar with Statham from his excellent performances in the two Guy Ritchie films Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. However, Transporter is nothing like Statham's two previous films. While Latham himself does an impressive job and is very convincing in the film's series of highly imaginative fight sequences, most of the other performances are forced and one-dimensional. The one exception is Inspector Tarconi (Francois Berléand), the French detective who interacts with Frank on various occasions. The dialogue between these two characters is instinctive and uncontrived. There is more chemistry between Frank and Tarconi than between Frank and his love interest, Lai. The romance between Frank and Lai is superfluous, artificial and unrealized.

Moreover, the film is filled with huge, gaping holes in the plot and timeline. There is never any explanation as to why Lai is being transported. And the initial plot of Frank being a transporter is completely dropped mid-film in lieu of a plot concerning Lai's father smuggling immigrants from Asia, all of whom may, for some undisclosed reason, die.

That brings me to the point at which this film became a comedy for me: Lai's father, Mr. Kwai, played by Ric Young. He is something directly from a 1984 B movie that you would see on UPN on a Saturday afternoon. His dialogue consists of one-liners and stereotypically cryptic, but funny, denunciations.

But it was his physical appearance that had me shaking with laughter. Young is certainly the butt of some plastic surgeon's cruel joke or experiment in cosmetic hermaphroditism.

From the look of his smoothly effeminate features acquired by means of a horrific facelift, Young could have been Lai's father and her mother. There was no way I could take him seriously as a villain. From the moment he entered the scene, all of the blunders in the plot, all of the stereotypical dialogue, the entire film, became comedic.

The problem with this film is that it tries to be something it's not. Instead of admitting that it's only a variation of a James Bond film, and thus focusing on the action and the dynamic chemistry between the actors, the film is confounded with unrealized plot variations and undeveloped emotional and ethical situations.

Transporter should have realized that it had nothing to say concerning the ontology of human existence and settled for being an entertaining and exciting spectacle. The viewer must always willingly suspend disbelief when watching a film, but the level of suspension and filtering required for this movie detracted from what could have been a superficially enjoyable film.

As I left the theater, I felt as lost as when I had entered ­ plus I was poorer. So, out of a sense of duty to my fellow financially-challenged students, may I suggest spending your money wisely, and choosing a different film to watch this weekend ­ perhaps a musical.