General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Taxi 2

Taxi 2 is a 2000 French action comedy directed by Gérard Krawczyk and written by Luc Besson, the second film in the Taxi series. It stars Samy Naceri as Marseille taxi driver Daniel Morales and Frédéric Diefenthal as police inspector Émilien Coutant-Kerbalec, who race to Paris to rescue a love interest and the visiting Japanese minister of defense from kidnappers.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	29 March 2000 in France; CNC visa no. 97378 issued 24 March 2000, classified Tous publics²^•³
Director / writer	Gérard Krawczyk; screenplay by Luc Besson, who also produced²
Main cast	Samy Naceri (Daniel Morales), Frédéric Diefenthal (Émilien Coutant-Kerbalec), Marion Cotillard (Lilly Bertineau), Emma Wiklund (Petra), Bernard Farcy (Commissaire Gibert)¹
Runtime	1 h 22 min (CNC registered 89 min)¹^•³
US box office	$729.8K gross, distributed by 20th Century Fox¹
Franchise standing	Part of a series that grossed a reported $200 million worldwide with 23 million admissions in France; listed at 6.5 on IMDb⁴
Reception gap	AlloCiné press average 2.8/5 (15 reviews) against a spectator score of 2.0/5 from about 36,000 ratings⁵^•²

Spoilers

Plot

Daniel, a speed-obsessed taxi driver, is finally to be presented by his girlfriend Lilly to her father, a general in the French army. The meal is interrupted when the general must receive the Japanese minister of defense, who is visiting France to invest in French antiterrorism expertise and to sign a contract worth many billions of dollars. Daniel drives the minister to the airport at record speed, where he rejoins Émilien. Organized yakuza kidnap the minister, along with Petra, who has just confessed her love to Émilien, and Daniel and Émilien pursue the kidnappers to Paris to rescue Petra and the Japanese minister.⁶^•⁷^•²¹ The kidnappers intend to manipulate the politician into creating a serious diplomatic incident during a meeting in Paris with President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin; the taxi and its passengers foil the plan.⁷ A synopsis in the French press adds that the gang plans to have the minister hypnotized so that he will kill the president, causing France to break relations with Japan.⁸

Place in the franchise

Taxi 2 followed Gérard Pirès's Taxi (1998), which drew nearly 6.5 million spectators in France, and preceded Krawczyk's Taxi 3 (2003), Taxi 4 (2007), and Taxi 5 (2018).¹³^•⁴ In the series' engagement chart the second film sits between the first (7.0) and the later entries, whose ratings decline to 4.6 for Taxi 5.⁴ Scholars of French action cinema treat the series as a blend of transnational genres, the Hollywood buddy movie, French comedy, and action and crime film, with the second film adding martial arts elements to Daniel's car chases around Marseille.¹⁷ The film reached the UK on 29 June 2001 on DVD with French Dolby Digital audio and English subtitles.¹⁸

Production

Krawczyk came to the project through Luc Besson, having assisted on Joan of Arc; he later said that without Besson he would never have taken on the Taxi saga.⁹^•¹⁰ Production companies included ARP Sélection, StudioCanal, TF1 Films Productions, and EuropaCorp, the studio Besson had founded after Gaumont declined to back his projects.¹^•¹¹ Peugeot continued its partnership with the series, and the filmmakers' pressure on the carmaker to appear in the sequel is documented in a French investigative report.¹²

Fatal stunt accident. On 16 August 1999, during filming in Paris, a Peugeot 406 left the tunnel at the porte Dauphine and flew off a ramp as the stunt required; the accident killed a member of the crew.¹³ The investigation continued for years: in June 2002 the stunt coordinator Rémy Julienne and the producer Luc Besson were placed under formal investigation for involuntary homicide and injuries, and judicial sources stated there had been neither prior tests nor calculations; critics of the production said it had refused to rehearse the stunts on Julienne's circuit before shooting. Krawczyk was heard as an assisted witness.¹¹^•¹⁴

Reception

French critics were divided. AlloCiné's normalized press average was 2.8 out of 5 across 15 outlets.⁵ Le Parisien called out vulgar humor and anti-Japanese racism while predicting guaranteed success; Libération wrote that the film aimed low, fast, and cheap; Le Monde found that when the pacing held, the film took on the grace of a destructive and amiable cartoon.⁵ The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called it an entertaining high-speed romp with a happy taste of the camp Roger Moore era Bond films.¹⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 70% Tomatometer from only 3 reviews, with more than 10,000 audience ratings.¹ AlloCiné's registered spectator score sits far lower, at 2.0/5 from about 36,000 notes, a gap one reader comment highlighted by calling it one of the highest-admission French films in history.² The film won the Prix du Public at the Alpe d'Huez Comedy Film Festival in 2001.¹⁶

Availability

Streaming access varies by country and date. In the United Kingdom the film streams on Amazon Prime Video and can be rented or bought on Apple TV Store and Amazon Video.¹⁹ In France it is available for rental on Canal VOD, Amazon Video, TF1+, and other services, with no free option.²⁰ A Dutch tracker reported in October 2026 that the film was unavailable on Dutch streaming services, though present on Netflix in France.⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released in the 2000s › Released 2000 to 2004

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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