Taxi 2 -2000-

The film also expertly blends French comedy with elements of Asian martial arts cinema, capitalizing on the late-90s and early-2000s global craze for ninja and kung-fu action.

was a massive success at the box office. It proved that French cinema could make big, exciting action movies just like Hollywood. It led to three more sequels and made the white Peugeot 406 a famous car icon.

One day, Daniel is approached by his old friend, Émile (Jean-Christophe Victor), who works for the French police. Émile asks Daniel to help him with a mission to catch a group of Japanese Yakuza members who are in France to retrieve a valuable artifact.

It is fascinating to note that Taxi 2 was released in March 2000, while The Fast and the Furious (2001) was still a year away. While the American franchise focused on tuner culture and family drama, Taxi 2 -2000- focused on absurd vehicular transformations and pure slapstick.

Unlike many action-comedies that treat the humor as filler, Taxi 2 integrates it into the stunt work. A chase is funnier when the villain’s getaway car is a fleet of identical, silently-gliding black sedans, and the hero’s solution is to turn Marseille into a maze of his own making.

Released in March 2000, Taxi 2 (French: Taxi Deux ) is the second installment in Luc Besson's celebrated Taxi film series. The film sees the return of the beloved, mismatched pair: the perpetually late but supremely talented taxi driver, Daniel Morales (Samy Naceri), and the bumbling, hapless police inspector, Émilien Coutant-Kerbalec (Frédéric Diefenthal).

Inspector Émilien (Frédéric Diefenthal) is tasked with the case, but his complete incompetence (and his obsession with a new love interest, a gorgeous traffic cop) leads nowhere. Naturally, he calls upon Daniel and the legendary white Peugeot 406.