Taxi (Luc Besson) DVD French AS NEW

Samy Naceri and Marion Cotillard star in this French thriller written by Luc Besson. Speed-obsessed ex-pizza delivery boy Daniel (Naceri) now drives a custom-built taxi and prides himself on the fact that it is so fast that it can even evade police radars. When he unwittingly gives a speedy lift to police officer Emelien Coutan (Frederic Diefenthal) he is informed that he'll have to give up the car unless he co-operates with the police and acts as Emelien's personal driver. Daniel agrees to the deal and ends up in a high-speed pursuit of German thieves.

Executive-produced by Luc Besson (The Big Blue) but directed by the far more obscure Gérard Pirès, this anodyne but perfectly amiable buddy movie-cum-policier sets up sexily scar-faced Samy Narceri as a speed-obsessed Marseilles taxi driver who's cajoled into helping clumsy cop Frédéric Diefenthal catch a gang of German bank robbers. The dialogue, characterisation and plotting are as flimsy as a rusty Lada, but they're only padding anyway between the slices of car-chase and motorway action that form the steely infrastructure of the film. These, indeed, are pretty spectacular: impressively fast, they're filmed by either low-slung bumper-mounted cameras to make the road seem perilously close or from helicopters to show just how unfaked the action is, while the generally excellent soundtrack pumps relentlessly on. The final stunt, involving an unfinished motorway overpass, is a real beauty in particular.

When not zooming round corners and round asphalt, the characters puzzle dimly over the blindingly obvious ruses of the baddies and make continually frustrated attempts to sleep with their unfeasibly pneumatic love interests. If a French lad's magazine could talk, it would look something like Taxi, which of course will be no bad thing for many a viewer.

BUYER TO PAY POSTAGE IF REQUIRED, PAYPAL WITH CONDITIONS.