The Transporter reboot should more properly have been entitled Transporter: Running On Fumes.
It’s not that it’s terrible but, rather, while it hits all the beats you expect from a Transporter movie, Ed Skrein, the new Frank Martin, has zero charisma – and the franchise is all about charisma.
Refueled opens with a couple of pimps being forcibly/fatally retired and some new, Russian guys taking over. They leave three new girls to get to work – and one of the late pimps’ girls decides to work for them.
Cut to fifteen years later, with five cheap hoods trying to figure out how to boost a sleek black Audi when Frank Martin arrives in the parking garage and suggests they leave. They’d rather steal the car so they do the wrong thing and get their heads handed to them.
Unfortunately, this makes Frank 38 seconds late meeting his dad – newly retired spy Frank Sr. (Ray Stevenson) – who gently chides him for being late. After a bit of getting to know Senior (who tends to call his son Junior), Frank takes a job – a job that becomes more than expected when the women who have hired him kidnap his dad to make sure he doesn’t try anything funny.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that the four women who have hired Frank are those new girls from fifteen years earlier – and that they are trying to take down their former employers.
Outside of a few good brawls and one decent car chase, there’s not much to recommend Refueled. Skrein is, at best, serviceable – he’s in terrific shape and handles the fights well enough but has no panache, no style. Where former Frank Jason Statham was both steak and sizzle, Skrein is Salisbury steak and undercooked potatoes.
As an actor, Skrein fares no better – lines that Statham would have killed just lie there and die coming from him. Where Statham would come off as being unruffled, Skrein comes across as a bit robotic.
The villains aren’t much better. The Russian trio of Arkady Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic), Yuri (Yuri Kolokolnikov) and Leo (Lenn Kudrjawizki) are all undercooked as well – and stereotypes (crazy, lazy and suspicious, respectively) to boot.
Stevenson aside, the women are what keep Refueled from being boring.
Noemie Lenoir is suitably chilly and chilling as Maissa, the girl who joined the Russians and became Arkady’s woman (and, one suspects, the brains behind his success).
Loan Chabonal’s Anna is gorgeous, but also coolly intelligent and calculating. Gabriella Wright’s Gina is equally as smart, but the caretaker of the group, making sure everyone is okay. Tatiana Pajkovic’s Maria is the more emotional volatile one – the one you might expect to be reckless. Wenxia Yu’s Qiao is the one who seems capable of having fun, but has a darker undercurrent.
Without the five of them, and Stevenson, Refueled would be practically inert – even with its action sequences. And speaking of direction, Camille Delamarre (Brick Mansions) comes down right in the space between fun and awful here. He just doesn’t give the film any kind of distinctive look or feel.
Transporter: Refueled suggests the franchise is out of gas.
Final Grade: C-