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"Taxi 2" is a virtual reprise of the 1998 French box-office smash, "Taxi", and made headlines during shooting when a cameraman was killed by an out-of-control car. While there's very little of merit in this tongue-in-cheek actioner, it at least delivers the requisite amount of high-octane thrills.
As in the first film, "Taxi 2" finds nervous cop Emilien (Frédéric Diefenthal) joining forces with speed freak cabbie Daniel (Samy Naceri), this time to foil some Japanese Yakuza operating on the mean streets of Marseilles. In keeping with the original's distasteful racist jibes (directed against Germans and Koreans on that occasion), Luc Besson's script takes plenty of snide pot shots at our Oriental cousins while grudgingly acknowledging their technical superiority and martial arts skills. There are also lots of leering shots of buxom Emma Sjöberg, who has nothing to do but model a variety of revealing outfits.
Broad comedy comes through Daniel's desperate attempts to return home to his sex-mad wife (Marion Cotillard) and give his future father-in-law the slip, while director Gérard Krawczyk (who filmed the original "Taxi" following instructions passed on from a bedridden Gérard Pirè) ups the stakes in the latter stages by parachuting Daniel's souped-up supercab over Paris. The story involves a kidnapped Japanese ambassador, but plot is the last thing you should worry about in a film where one's interest in proceedings is directly proportionate to the amount of squealing tyres, wrecked vehicles and punch-ups filling the screen.
See "Gone in 60 Seconds" for more car-chasing thrills and visit the .
