Put into production in 1998, while the first Taxi movie was enjoying commercial success inside and outside France, this boisterous follow-up sticks closely to producer Luc Besson¹s winning formula, combining boy-racer stunts with lowbrow comedy and action sequences that bring to mind the excesses of U.S. pulp television. Brought in to replace Gerard Pires, the director of the first film who was hospitalised weeks into filming this one, Gerard Krawczyk, fresh from completing second-unit work on Besson¹s Jeanne d¹Arc, ably enlarges on what had gone before. Taxi driver Daniel (Samy Naceri), owner of a super-charged Peugeot, exudes the same relaxed, anti-authoritarian charm as he did in the previous movie; his brother Emilien (Frederic Diefenthal), a member of Marseilles¹ supposedly crack division of elite police officers, bumbles along with typically inefficient grace; his German colleague Petra (Emma Sjoberg) retains her sexy competence; and their boss Chief Inspector Gibert (Bernard Farcy) remains a witless, overbearing bore. Like figures from a live-action bande dessinee, these characters display a degree of appealing, good-natured enthusiasm, even when reacting to the most outlandish scenarios. Indeed, with its crisp dialogue (essentially a series of wisecracks and one-liners), cleanly shot high-speed road sequences, and no-nonsense pace, Taxi 2 has all the cheery four-colour exuberance of a modern comic strip.
France, 2000. English subtitles. Colour. Technovision anamorphic. Dolby digital stereo. 82 min.