By Many people brush off the Transporter films as crappy, but the first two are actually great examples of 2000s action. The first was around for the birth of the cheap European action flick. Taken also falls into this category and pretty much anything else by Luc Besson. The second helped usher in a brief explosion of what I like to call uber-action where action set pieces are taken to such ridiculous lengths you can’t help but suspend every layer of disbelief there is and enjoy yourself (think Crank).
We don’t talk about the third one.
When I heard they were rebooting the franchise with The Transporter Refueled I was optimistic. Besson hasn’t been on his A game recently, but he was returning to write the film and I know he’s still got some magic left. Hopefully he’s saving it all for his epic sci-fi film, because there’s none here.
The Transporter Refueled
Director: Camille Delamarre
Rated: PG-13
Release Date: September 4, 2015
The Transporter Refueled is basically The Transporter, but with a different actor and four girls instead of one. Yes, there’s some minor plot differences, but the general gist is that a professional driver, Frank Martin (Ed Skrein), is called into a job and then gets sucked into some drama he doesn’t want to be in. In this case it involves a group of sex slaves led by Anna (Loan Chabonal) and his father Frank Sr. (Ray Stevenson). The premise, much like in the first films, is that this is very against Frank’s rules and his personal coda.
The problem with that premise is that it’s never executed. Unlike in the original film where you felt like Frank was constantly upset by this shift in his life this time around it feels like he’s all in from the start. It takes away one of the unique edges that the franchise had and instead of a character you get an archetype. Frank stoically goes from fight sequence to chase sequence on the most predictable path there is. His character never really gets pushed into interesting places, and that makes the rest of the flaws in the film stand out even more.
Of course part of the charm of the original character was what Jason Statham brought to the role. Skrein brings none of it. Statham’s charm, wit and style are replaced by what appears to be a very handsome wood carving. Skreim lacks the every-man demeanor that Statham brings to a role and that means that his Frank Martin is just boring. It doesn’t help that he clearly doesn’t have the fighting skills to handle the role. He’s slow in the sequences he’s in and the director has to overly rely on quick edits to make it seem like fights have impact.
Not that Camille Delamarre (another failed Luc Besson protege) does very much with his directing. There are admittedly some fantastic ideas for fights and action sequences in this film, but Delamarre can’t piece them together no matter how hard he tries. Chases are disjointed to the point of confusion leaving them uninteresting despite copious amounts of flipping cars. A fight sequence in an enclosed hallway with small drawers on its walls is completely wasted while the premise of Frank fighting along side his slowly moving car is awesome, but never executed in a way that makes it feel so.
I made the horrible mistake of watching Mad Max: Fury Road the night before this. It was like watching the London Symphony Orchestra perform and then listening to a five-year-old smash his hands into a Casio keyboard. That’s clearly not a fair comparison. Comparing anything to the best action movie ever isn’t fair, but I’ll do it anyway because we should start expecting more.
The film never commits to a style of action either. Switching randomly between a serious car chase movie and ridiculous uber-action, the movie just feels awkward all the time. When some sort of physics defying stunt occurs it feels out of place instead of awesome. If you’re going to be ridiculous be ridiculous. Don’t try to be grounded and then have your hero fly off a jet ski through a car window with pin point accuracy. Also, jet skis aren’t cool. They’re never cool.
As an action film Refueled fails pretty hard, but it’s even worse in terms of its treatment of women characters. Not to keep bringing up Mad Max, but this is the exact opposite of how that film perfectly pulled off a plot about kept and abused women. The four fleeing sex workers in Refueled were all kidnapped as children and forced into the trade. The movie attempts to turn their story into one of triumph over an evil doer, but they’re still basically there as sex objects for Frank and his father to play with. What’s the first thing these abused women do when Frank helps them escape? They show up in lingerie and reward him with sex. Haven’t we moved past crap like that? Do we really need some empty love story just so we can have a sex scene, especially for a character whose entire drive is to be detached. The original at least kept its female “lead” clothed for the majority of the film. This one has them stripping as an older man ogles their body in the first 15 minutes.
Maybe I’m coming down incredibly harsh on The Transporter Refueled. After all it’s just supposed to be a dumb action flick. The problem is it can’t even pull that off. It’s failure at even being popcorn fun opens it up to deeper and deeper ridicule. Honestly, we should expect more from our action flicks anyways. The world of action cinema has improved drastically since the original film released and yet this franchise seems to be going in reverse.
