It’s just not the same without Statham
The Transporter Refueled
Rating: Starring: Ed Skrein, Loan Chabanol Directed by: Camille Delamarre Running time: 100 minutes
The Transporter Refueled would be truer to its title if it were called The Transporter Rebooted.
Its original title was The Transporter Legacy, but at some point the filmmakers must have realized the real legacy belongs to the first three films in the series. They weren’t great movies but thanks to their star, Jason Statham, they achieved a certain high-velocity charm. He was almost Zen as Frank “The Transporter” Martin, putting the “om” in vroom.
But he’s MIA in this new Transporter, and it’s clear in the early going who the real star is. Before we even meet the new Frank Martin, we’re introduced to his ride, a brand new jet-black Audi S8. Second billing goes to Nicholas Hoult look-alike Ed Skrein, who never quite measures up to his predecessor. For one thing, his five o’clock shadow overshoots the mark by at least 15 minutes.
His rules are the same, mind you: No names, no questions, no changing the deal. Although his latest client, former prostitute Anna (Loan Chabanol), manages to break all three, and particularly the last one, when she kidnaps Frank Senior (Ray Stevenson) and blackmails Junior into helping her wreak vengeance on a bunch of bad guys with names like Yuri, Ivan, Karasov and Imasova.
You don’t really need to tell them apart. They’re Russians and they run a prostitution ring — we see some of their heavyhanded tactics in the opening scene, set in the French Riviera in 1995 — so how could they have any redeeming or even unique qualities?
Similarly, Anna’s confederates are an interchangeable bunch, particularly when they don identical blond wigs, high heels and little black dresses to steal from their former pimps. It’s like being robbed by an old Robert Palmer video.
Refueled’s credits feature a quartet of writers, including series creator Luc Besson. The director is Camille Delamarre, an editor on Transporter 3 and second-unit director on several episodes of the Transporter TV series.
But they seem to be going through the motions on this one. There’s a car chase through Monaco that looks like it was assembled from old Grand Prix footage. Other chases and fight scenes feature frenetic cutting to disguise the fact very little is happening.
I did enjoy a showdown in a boardroom on a yacht; the walls are covered in easy-to-grab battle axes and harpoons. (Not sure how much help that life saver will be though.)
The reboot also leaves several important questions hanging. How many Ls are there in “Refueled?” (I thought there were two.) Why is Frank driving a 2015 Audi when the onscreen titles make it clear that the action takes place in 2010? How did those prostitutes pick up such incredible bank-robbing skills?
Never are we prodded to ponder the one question that action movies should be shooting for: How did they do that?
My final query, asked and answered: Is there such a thing as a low-octane thriller? Yep.