Review: The Transporter: Refuelled

Ed Skrein plays Frank Martin, driver-for-hire, currently employed by hooker Loan Chabanol to help her and her fellow hooker accomplices seeking to take out a prostitution ring in France headed by a nasty Russian pimp (the singularly unimpressive Radivoje Bukvic). In order to make Frank more compliant, the girls kidnap his Bond-esque secret agent father Frank Sr. (Ray Stevenson), though the old man seems to rather enjoy the female attention.

 

Oh, this was a good idea. Let’s reboot the “Transporter” franchise for 2015, but instead of Jason Statham, let’s cast someone (Ed Skrein, brilliant decision to leave “Game of Thrones”. Bravo, son.) who is pretty much the complete antithesis of Jason Statham. Yeah, let’s cast a guy who looks like a cross between a Calvin Klein model and a lost member of the Goss family from 80s Brit pop/boy band Bros. Skrein simply won’t do, he doesn’t share anything in common with Statham other than stubble and an accent, the latter of which sounds incredibly forced yet half-arsed at the same time coming from Mr. Skrein. If he’s meant to be an alternative, he’s neither an interesting nor effective one. He’s beyond wooden. Cast Scott Adkins in the role, and at least half of this film’s problems would be solved.

 

Thank God for Ray Stevenson, then. He’s an erratic actor, but when he’s on, he’s enjoyable to watch. He’s not in this all that much, but he’s having much more fun throughout than anyone else, including me. He steals this one effortlessly, not that effort is required from him here. Fuck The Transporter Guy, I want a movie about Transporter Guy’s Dad. He’s awesome, his son’s a walking cologne billboard ad.

 

Co-written by the inimitable Luc Besson (director of “The Professional” and “The Fifth Element”), directed by fellow Frenchman Camille Delamarre (“Brick Mansions”), and backed by the most dodgy Eurotrash-sounding production company I’ve ever heard of (EuropaCorp, which Besson is aligned with), the rest of the cast here sound like English is their sixth language and they’re not comfortable speaking it expressively. I’ll give Mr. Delamarre one thing, though, he’s armed the film with a nice, brisk pace. Being a former editor, one would hope that he’d have a handle on that. However, his editing skills aren’t always on point in other respects. An early, tricked-up car chase is so over-edited that it shows the director didn’t have faith in the footage that was shot. The action, like the plot is pretty much par for the course overall, except for one admittedly really cool bit where Skrein puts the car in neutral, gets out, beats a few skulls in, gets back in, and drives like it’s nothing. Why couldn’t the rest of the film be like that? That was cool, most everything else is lame.

 

Incredibly bland with a leading man to match, this isn’t so much refuelled as running on empty. It never gets into first gear, let alone out of it. No, this film doesn’t deserve wittier put-downs. The screenplay is by Besson and the team of Adam Cooper & Bill Collage (“Exodus: Gods and Kings”, the thoroughly disappointing comedy “Tower Heist”).

 

Rating: D+