A new Bond? Who cares? Who needs Bond?

We’ve got “The Transporter.”

The second installment on this French-engineered, Brit-starring Hong Kong-styled action series is more slam-bang and much sillier than the original. It loses some of the lean, mean minimalism of “The Transporter” and crosses right over into Bond far-fetchedness in its plot and stunts. But it’s still a noisy, goofy, cartoonishly violent ride.

This time our transporter, played by the bullet-headed, rule-spouting Jason Statham, is running his particular brand of delivery service in Miami. But the methodical, super-skilled ex-Special Forces getaway driver has been reduced to taking a rich kid to and from school.

At least he’s teaching the boy (Hunter Clary) “the rules.”

Frank Martin (Jason Statham) tries to save the lives of two boys who are kidnapped and injected with a potentially fatal virus in Transporter

“Respect a man’s car, and the man respects you.”

He tells the kid he’ll never let anything happen to him. He tells the kid to never make a promise you can’t keep.

And then the kid is napped.

Our transporter is kind of warm for the boy’s mom – ex-model Amber Valletta. She’s depending on him because her drug enforcement politico hubbie (Matthew Modine) is useless.

But what can you do when an international terrorist “with perfect syntax” (Alessandro Gassman) is bent on doing something with a virus to the kid and maybe the rest of Miami?

You get to transporting, that’s what you do. Statham, with the aid of stunt doubles, chases bad guys and is chased by the feds all over sexy pre-Katrina South Florida. Cars, watercrafts, a helicopter and a private jet come into play.

The transporter relentlessly tracks the bad guys with the aid of the French cop (Francois Berleand, brought back for comic relief), all with an eye toward a showdown with another model, the murderous and ever-undressed Lola, played by model-actress-singer Kate Nauta.

Casting in these movies is for effect. The first one had a Chinese director and Asian overtones. This one has the same martial arts director, Corey Yuen, so the fights are even more spectacular. They work because Statham, an ex-Olympic diver, can remake himself into a British Jet Li – call him Brit Lee.

“Transporter 2” is, like the original, loaded with action fun. But a recent re-viewing of “The Transporter” on DVD shows that, reduced to TV size, the plot springs leaks, and the brawls, car, boat and plane crashes look like what they plainly are – fake.

If you really want to be transported by this one, better see it on the big screen.