The Transporter Refueled

By: Robert Murphy

It's often hard to tell just what makes a movie work when it comes to the category of action since they can often be seen as nothing more than nonstop adrenaline fueled rampages, but for some reason they end up being great. When it comes to The Transporter series, I always felt that it was leading man Jason Statham that brought the certain charm that the films needed to be worth while. Now though a new leading man aims to take his place and continue forward without him at the helm of the classic Audi and introduce a fresh young face to the game with Ed Skrein (former Game of Thrones actor for Daario Naharis). But, whether or not he has the chops to knock the big guy off of the throne that started Statham's early action career was something I was determined to find out. 

The story starts off with a brief introduction to the main villains that you will be "hating" throughout the majority of the film. In a hail of bullets three men usurp themselves as the top dogs of the French Riviera by killing of their competition and replacing them with their very own call girls. Flash forward some fifteen odd years later and an odd plot for revenge begins to take place with one of the downtrodden girls from the beginning of the film. Where Frank Martin (Skrein) comes into play is with the first phase of the operation doing what he does best which is drive and drive really well. This along with the fighting scenes are the only true moments that continue to transfer over from Statham's day as the illustrious transporter. We see a fast paced chase scene through the streets of France with cops hot on Frank's tail but with some excellent maneuvers and a clever use of fire hydrants, he makes his escape with the former call girl and her two partners in the back seat.

This made for a wonderful turn of events as the first half hour of Refueled left little to no resemblance of the former series left to be enjoyed. Ed Skrein failed to pull off the same dead pan style of delivery that his counterpart had given in the earlier films but he did have what it took to make some enjoyable action sequences. The first and by far the best of which was during the night club scene where Frank took down three goons that were ten times his size with some rope and clever use of some drawers down a narrow corridor. Then it was outside to knock some guys out while the car enters some sort of auto pilot mode. When it came to revamping things, the car was what benefited the most from some fine tuning. The resident favorite Audi makes it's return with all new gadgets to show off such as self opening doors, interchangeable license plats and finger print recognition on the wheel to name a few. Not that The Transporter car ever needed these James Bond spy tools before or to such a degree but they were nonetheless an appealing on to be sure.  

In terms of overall appeal however these moments of action and excitement were short lived as things pushed forward. Outside of Ed Skrein, dialogue for the story moved along at a snails pace and was never worth the reward of not knowing what exactly our former call girls were up to. The ringleader of the four girls, Anna (Loan Chabanol), put together this payback scheme against her now former bosses for tormenting her for years and sentencing her to a life of prostitution. Her group oddly is modeled after some deranged version of The Three Musketeers (they even say, "All for one and one for all at," one point) and without Frank it would all fall apart. This leads to them kidnapping Frank's retired father Frank Sr. (Ray Stevenson) in order to make sure "Junior" stays with them to the end. 

Excluding the various junior jokes, Frank Senior was perhaps the most engaging among the cast and even made Ed Skrein shine for his role too. The two had great chemistry with one another as they both secretly know that there is more to the other than meets the eye. Frank Senior was supposedly a former retail salesman that just so happened to go to the most dangerous parts of the world for work. The fall of the Berlin wall and the Korean war to name just a few that were mentioned. His obvious history as some sort of spy though does not explain why he gets kidnapped not once but twice throughout the story. After Frank finally gets away with his father in one piece, the main bad guy finally shows some gumption and decides to kidnap Frank's father to get the money that Anna and her friends had stolen.

Arkady Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic) Arkady Karasovplays another lack luster cast member who never seems to have any real drive to catch the people responsible for stealing from his partners. Every portion of on screen time the actor had was spent silently brooding over each scene that Anna and her team left for him to find. There was a decent attempt to try and make his role more prominent as it turns out that Frank has some sort of history with Arkady but this to leads nowhere, even when the two meet face to face and confront one another, it amounts to them basically growling at one another. There was no build up at all to the films final concluding moment where the two battle on top of a rock with their fists like something out of Highlander where Frank is left standing victorious at the top saying "There can be only one!!"

The Transporter Refueled should have stayed in the garage where Statham left it in the concluding trilogy to the original series. This new revamped story doesn't do much of anything in expanding upon the work of the original films and in many ways it is a step backwards when it comes to image of the gruff and fearless transporter that people have seen before. There were some excellent action sequences and fight scenes, seeing Frank drive his car through a boarding platform and through an airport was perhaps one of the best car scenes I've seen this year. But, outside of the sparingly placed action moments, Refueled is not the successor or the retooled film it should have been. 

Good:

- Ray Stevenson as Frank Senior

- Fighting sequences

- The Audi's new look and wonderful gadgets

Bad:

- Poor acting across the board

- A flimsy story that somehow realize on an unreliable lead actor

- Dialogue is flat and you can hardly believe this people act or behave as they do

Scully Rating: 3.0 out of 10