Ever wonder what gives producers the idea to suddenly bring back a defunct franchise from the dead for seemingly no reason whatsoever? Hey, don’t expect any answers from me, I’m often as baffled aboit this sort of thing as everybody else, but while we’ve puzzled over the reasoning concerning legacy sequels and reboots suddenly springing up out of nowhere, at least some of the big titles, like a Ghostbusters or a Matrix makes a certain amount of sense.
With this in mind, I challenge anyone to give me a logical reason why Luc Besson and his Europacorp cronies thought that defibrillating the Transporter franchise back into some semblance of life would be a good idea. Granted, way back in 2002 the first film cemented Jason Statham as a credible (and bald) action star, but has anyone actually ever credited the Transporter name as a seal of quality in the world of action cinema. The producers obviously did because in 2015 – seven years after the last installment – the franchise started it’s ignition once again; but with Statham no longer behind the wheel, could the series transport us back to the “glory days” of the early 2000s?
Frank Martin is back. Sort of. Not really. Basically what we have here is sort of a reboot situation that presents us with a skinnier Frank with hair who has the same job, rules and car etiquette as his predecessor. However, this face lift doesn’t stop the guy from getting into the same sorts of issues as the other guy did and once again, we find that life on the French Riviera proves to be oddly stressful and crammed full of car chases.
You see, Frank’s going through something of an awkward transition at the moment as his ex-MI6 father, Frank Martin Senior, has recently retired and is facing a pension that blatently isn’t going to support his playboy lifestyle. However, the constant, smug, advise from his dad will soon be the least of Frank Jr’s troubles when he accepts a job to pick up and transport some mysterious cargo the next day and before you know it, soon Frank’s both junior and senior are neck deep in chaos as they find themselves entangled in a plot to bring down a Russian sex trafficking ring.
Anna is a prostitute trapped working for gangster Arkady Karasov for around fifteen years after he took over the business in the French Riviera with the aid of his comrades and a bunch of machine guns and ever since then, she has been cooking up a complex plan to bring him down and get out of the business for good.
However, while she and her trio of partners – Qiao, Maria and Gina – are attempting to dismantle a criminal empire by turning the criminals against each other, they rope Frank into everything by getting him to work for them as an accomplice by kidnapping his father. This means that he has to drive, punch, shoot and sprint his way through numerous hairy situations if he wants to get his oddly horny father back safely.
So, it’s probably without a single shred of surprise that I reveal that The Transporter Refueled doesn’t manage the task of returning the franchise back to its former glory, which honestly shouldn’t have been that hard considering the series was never that great to start with. Sure, Statham brought his gravelly charm and frequently shirtless torso to something vaguely approaching the A-list and the movies often contained a couple of nicely eccentric fight sequences to distract us from the infantile plotting and characters, but even at its very best, the most the franchise could muster was the odd, fun, ninety minutes that never rose above the level of disposable timewaster. Somehow, The Transporter Refueled can’t even manage that, showing up to work with a bone dry gas tank despite that audacious title and while the colourful idiocy and flashy production values are still there (not even Ed Wood could make the French Riviera look cheap), the pointlessness of the whole enterprise is as easy to spot as its conflicting inspirations.
While co-scribbling down the script – possibly with crayon – Besson seems to be unsure which famous franchise he wants to borrow from first. The suited and booted, stoic nature of Ed Skrein’s bland stand in is suggesting a return to the Statham days, but the influx of Russian baddies and loud, laser filled clubs probably means that the film is hoping to be John Wick with a PG-13 rating. Elsewhere, the appearance of Ray Stevenson’s amusingly suave Frank senior and all of his constructive criticism means that someone on the Europacorp staff recently had Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade on in the office, but at the same time, the actor’s performance seems to be trying to invoke a certain sense of James Bond about it insofar as he bones anythings that moves, drains every alcohol glass dry and seemingly remains utterly unflappable during moments of bullet related crisis. However, while all three are fairly solid foundations to build your derivative action movie on, they often cancel each other out.
However, while Statham might have been able to make some of this work, the main problem lies in the casting of poor Ed Skrein who tackles the dialogue like he’s reading out loud for an eye test. Having the Stath’s Transporter get nagged by his cool dad would have been funny because he’s an established character, but having it happen to a new Transporter just makes Skrein just seem a little sad – like one of those reality shows when a stand-up comic goes on holiday with his dad. It also doesn’t help that this Frank Martin spends the entire film being manipulated and led through the nose by the character of Maria and at no point is really thinking for himself. Getting ragged on by his dad is one thing, but watching him get tricked constantly for an hour and forty minutes just makes him seem like a fucking idiot.
Something else that sticks out is that the film takes a worryingly flippant look at sex trafficking that has Maria telling Frank horror stories from her childhood and then immediately having sex with him because he was such a good sport about all the lying while his dad has a threesome next door with her friends – another sure sign that Besson’s involved. In fact, the movie misses the point so much, it even has the members of Maria’s team dress exactly alike to “fool” their enemies, but not only does it seem to be a visual cue that all women a basically alike and interchangeable, but often you can’t actually tell which of the group is our female lead which is probably something that’s best approached by a therapist and not someone who just wanted to review the Transporter franchise with a minimum of fuss.
Utter shit when anyone is standing still and talking, The Transporter Refueled perks up a bit during some (annoyingly over-edited) fight scenes and the odd, cool car chase and the moment where Frank rides a jetski up onto the beach and then dropkick someone through the passenger window of their car is worth that extra second star alone. However, for a franchise that’s openly insisting it’s been “refueled” it’s devastatingly unaware that the needle’s been stuck on empty for a lot longer than seven years.
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