The Transporter Refueled (2015)

The Transporter Refueled (2015)

Starring: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Loan Chabanol, Gabriella Wright, Tatiana Pajkovic, Yu Wenxia, Radivoje Bukvic, Noémie Lenoir, Lenn Kudrjawizki

Director: Camille Dellamarre

Action Director: Alain Figlarz, Laurent Demianoff

I’m pretty sure everybody was let down when it was announced that this film was no longer going to star Jason Statham. After all, like Sylvester Stallone as Rocky and Rambo, or Arnold Schwarzeneggar as Conan and the Terminator, Jason Statham is The Transporter. Thanks to his natural low-key charisma and action chops (backed up by Corey Yuen’s expert choreography), he made the role his own. Statham kept these movies afloat amidst their questionable (even by Hollywood standards) physics and ludicrous premises. Sadly, producers wanted to milk the franchise for even more money (even after the disappointing third film), making Statham an offer for apparently less money (to do an entire trilogy) than he was making per individual film. So he was out and the role went to British actor/rapper Ed Skrein.

The film is sort of like Casino Royale, in which it reboots the series, acts as a prequel, but moves the action to contemporary times. The movie opens with a scene ripping off the second Transporter film, with Frank Martin (Skrein) beating up some would-be carjackers (sans the cutie in the schoolgirl outfit) before picking up his dad from the British Embassy. Daddy (the late Ray Stevenson, of Punisher: War Zone) is a former spy who has now retired from the game (with a miserable pension, too). 

Meanwhile, some prostitutes in the employ of a Russian mobster named Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic, Taken and A Good Day to Die Hard) are getting back at their boss. First, they murder his accountant in a hotel room, leaving his corpse to burn along with the body of an unknown woman. One of them, Anna  (Loan Chabanol, of “Tales of the Walking Dead), hires Martin for a job. When arriving at the pick-up point—a bank where the dead accountant kept his safe deposit box--Frank learns that the two “packages” he was supposed to carry in addition to Anna are actually two of her fellow prostitutes: Gina (Gabriella Wright, of Everly and The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard) and Qiao (Yu Wenxia). Martin considers this a breach of his original agreement—apparently people do not count as packages (and I assume he charges for each person)—and initially refuses to do anything. But then Anna reveals that they have kidnapped Frank Sr., and Martin begrudgingly takes them across the city.

But they’re not done with them yet. Anna tells Frank that they’ve poisoned his father. Unless Martin sticks with him for the rest of their “mission,” they’ll withold the antidote from him. Next stop is a hospital, where Frank and Anna steal a cannister of knockout gas. They then go to a nightclub ran by one of Karasov’s associates, Imasova (Lenn Kudrjawizki, of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit). Frank switches one of the cannisters used in the fog machine for the knockout gas, rendering everybody on the dance floor (and in Imasova’s office) unconscious. There, Anna and her friends hack into his computer and transfer all of his money into a private account.

Next on the list is Yuri, another of Karasov’s colleagues, who spends most of his time on his own private jet—the movie never clarifies what his racket is. In this case, it’s Frank Sr. and Maria (Tatiana Pajkovic), another prostitute, who sneak aboard dressed as pilot and flight attendant, respectively. Maria slips Yuri a mickey and does the same thing the other girls did: hack into his computer and transfer all of the money out of his account. Those two barely escape with their lives. Now that two of Karasov’s buddies have been ripped off by his prostitutes, they begin to suspect him of betraying them. Karasov won’t have a lot of time to find Frank and the girls before his colleagues finally deal with him the way any self-respecting Russian mobster deals with traitors.

The Transporter series (is four films and TV series enough for a franchise?) is an interesting exercise in allowing French directors to work their action muscles. The first film was directed primarily by Corey Yuen, but Louis Leterrier assisted him with the more dialog-heavy segments. Leterrier assumed the director’s chair for the second film, just a year after he’d directed Jet Li in the superior Unleashed (or Danny the Dog). The third film went to Olivier Megaton, who later went on to direct Colombiana. This time, the reins went to Camille Dellamarre, who had directed the Hollywood remake of Banlieue 13: Brick Mansions, the year before. The Transporter films are naturally ridiculous, from the initial premise to the over-the-top action (both car and hand-to-hand), and this one is no more or less than the other films.

The action itself is less OTT than the other films, but the story is pretty silly. It’s a Rube Goldbergian plot to stick it to the Russian mob that is planned out to the last detail. It assumes that the four prostitutes have an innate knowledge of human psychology in order to make so many assumptions about how Karasov will act. It also places a lot of trust in Frank Martin’s abilities and his general ability to be on time at any given moment. I’m assuming that in the time they hatched the plan, they would have had to spend an absurd amount of time around Karasov and his associates in order to overhear enough to plan the details. And then there those lapses in logic, like Frank Sr. having a threesome with a pair of prostitutes, one of whom who has just (and I mean just) survived an emergency, non-professional surgery for bullet extraction(!).

Much like so many franchises today, the film veers wildly close into what internet reviewer The Critical Drinker defines as The Strong Female Character. This is a recent invention and is common in rebooted Intellectual Properties where the film is said to revolve around the male, but it’s the female who does most of the heavy lifting and occupies the higher moral ground. See Mad Max: Fury Road; the Star Wars prequel trilogy; and (according to some) the “Picard” series. In this case, it’s Anna—the other girls barely have any personality traits—who has done all the planning, while Frank Martin is around to simply drive and beat people up. Although you can argue that’s what he does in all the movies, there is a sense that he exercises his agency in how he deals with the bad guys. In this film, he feels like the hired muscle, allowing everybody else to think for him.

The action itself was taken out of Corey Yuen’s capable hands—he did better work in the Transporter movies than he was doing in Hong Kong at the time—and given to European stunt veterans Alain Figlarz and Laurent Demianoff. Both men have extensive experience in stuntwork and fight choreography. Figlarz’s credits as a fight choreographer include Taken 3 and Anna, while Demianoff worked on John Wick 4 and Gunpowder Milkshake. The action isn’t bad, although it suffers from too many quick cuts. Ed Skrein clearly isn’t in the same physical league as Jason Statham, although he tries his hardest. According to the IMDB, Skrein trained in krav maga for this film and he looks okay. The biggest fight happens close to halfway through when Skrein faces off with some burly gangsters at the nightclub. That fight features some Filipino escrima, too. The final showdown with main villain Bukvic is over a bit too quickly. But then again, that’s almost par for the course for the Transporter films: great fights, underwhelming climaxes.

The Transporter Refueled is an unnecessary and forgettable entry in a franchise nobody ever believed would become one. It came about too soon for a reboot, commits many of the same mistakes as its predecessors, and fails to add anything new or interesting to the mix, action or otherwise. I didn’t hate it like many of my colleagues did, but it really highlights the creative bankruptcy that has existed in Hollywood for the past two decades, but has gotten ever so worst in the last several years.