The Transporter Refueled
Directed by: Camille Dellamare
Written by: Adam Cooper & Bill Collage & Luc Besson
Starring: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevnson, Loan Chabanol, Gabriella Wright, Tatiana Pajkovic, Wenxia Yu, Rasha Bukvic, Lenn Kudrjawizki, Anatole Taubman, Noémie Lenoir
Action/Crime/Thriller - 96 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Sep 2015
Written by: Adam Cooper & Bill Collage & Luc Besson
Starring: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevnson, Loan Chabanol, Gabriella Wright, Tatiana Pajkovic, Wenxia Yu, Rasha Bukvic, Lenn Kudrjawizki, Anatole Taubman, Noémie Lenoir
Action/Crime/Thriller - 96 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Sep 2015
Brought to you by Audi and the American Express Platinum card, both products featured prominently in The Transporter Refueled, producer Luc Besson opts to reboot the lackluster franchise after Jason Statham wisely declined another lowbrow attempt to make his transporter interesting. Besson hired a younger cast, set up shop on the French Riviera, kept the same gimmicks, and offers audiences another awful example of what Besson considers an action thriller these days. The Transporter Refueled is another perplexing entry on Besson’s growing list of disappointments including the two most recent Taken films, Brick Mansions, The Family, Lockout, and 3 Days to Kill; these are only the failures within in the last three and a half years. The Transporter series has always been ridiculous with awful scripts, boring clichés, and miserable acting. The Transporter Refueled maintains a slightly more serious tone than its predecessors holding back on so many stomach-churning wisecracks, yet it remains a dreadful theater experience.
The new transporter is British ex-pat, Frank Martin (Ed Skrein). Frank deadpans the familiar cardinal rules concerning his services including no names, no questions, and no renegotiations, but just like every other Transporter film, he breaks them all – repeatedly. Just once, I want to watch this character deliver a package without any problems, explosions, or car flips, merely to see if such an action is possible. Skrein is noticeably younger than Statham’s version, has more hair, and what sounds like a posher London accent compared to Statham’s more northern Derbyshire dialect. The names and faces may have changed, but the car is still the same.
The new transporter is British ex-pat, Frank Martin (Ed Skrein). Frank deadpans the familiar cardinal rules concerning his services including no names, no questions, and no renegotiations, but just like every other Transporter film, he breaks them all – repeatedly. Just once, I want to watch this character deliver a package without any problems, explosions, or car flips, merely to see if such an action is possible. Skrein is noticeably younger than Statham’s version, has more hair, and what sounds like a posher London accent compared to Statham’s more northern Derbyshire dialect. The names and faces may have changed, but the car is still the same.
Beginning with The Transporter 2, when the vehicle abruptly switched from a BMW to an Audi most likely because Audi was willing to shell out the dough, the camera once again fetishizes the automobile. The 2012 Audi S8 enjoys multiple 360 degree panoramas, exposition extolling its top market features including fingerprint ignition and automatic door opening from a distance, and never endures a scratch or even a paint rub as it crashes through gates, slams into fire hydrants, and bumps up against endless pursuing police cars. The Transporter is infamous for the physics-defying stunts it puts its vehicles through. The Transporter 2 remains the winner with its upside down car bomb removal stunt but Refueled attempts a worthy addition to the list involving an airport ramp and terminal.
Writers Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, and Besson borrow even more nonsense from The Transporter 2 to bring forward. A character in this film is poisoned providing Frank with incentive to complete his mission to obtain the antidote. We have already endured this exact same garbage before in 2005. The Transporter 2’s opening scene was a menacing street gang attempting to steal the car and rob the driver. Guess how Refueled begins. The parking garage is there, the car is there, the street gang is there, and Frank nonchalantly disposes of the entire crew without wrinkling his pristine black Dior suit. If you’re going to reboot the franchise, how about you reboot the scenes as well; plagiarizing yourself is poor form Mr. Besson.
Another perplexing narrative move is the timeline. We flash forward 15 years after a brief prologue introduces the main villain as a Russian or Slavic pimp played by Radivoje Bukvic (2015’s Run All Night) who violently takes over prime Monaco prostitution terf. Only seven minutes later, the film shows him again, looking pretty much the same, but flashes back to black and white to remind us who he was even though we just saw him in color. The prime demographic for The Transporter Refueled may not be lining up to watch the latest four hour indie film at their local art house theater, but how dumb does Besson and director Camille Delamarre think we are that they have to go back so soon to remind us of what we just saw?
Delamarre earned a promotion after editing The Transporter 3 and directed Besson’s last two films, this one and Brick Mansions. Working alongside cinematographer Christophe Collette who has the same filmography, these two bombard the audience with relentless 360 shots and reintroduce us to the hand-to-hand combat scenes edited so fast it is impossible to follow along with whose knee just popped out of joint or where all these crowbars just came from which were absent a second ago. There are a few clever fight scenes including a moment in a confined hallway bordered by pullout drawers which Frank uses in an almost slapstick manner and another moment where he puts the car in a slow-rolling neutral as he removes the bad guys just in front of the grill as it inches forward.
Do not attempt to fill in the plot holes because they will just drive you insane. People show up to places they should have no idea they even need to go to. The girl who just got shot in the lower abdomen and had couch surgery aided by a bottle of vodka and cobwebs is up and about the next day walking without a limp. How were Frank, a Brit, and the bad guy, a Russian/Slav, in the same Army platoon in their younger days? How are characters that were sold into prostitution when they were 12 years old; therefore having no formal education, able to quote Alexandre Dumas verbatim from memory? Why must Luc Besson continue to punish audiences with God awful rubbish when we know he has the capacity to produce modern classics? I apologize for the wrath here, but Besson started it.
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