Most of it is ho-hum, with the exception of a scene in which two people jump from the belly of an airplane that is about to take off into the sun roof of Frank’s car. The script, by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Luc Besson, is in service of car chases, fight scenes and shootouts, which are filmed with a workmanlike efficiency by Camille Delamarre (“Brick Mansions”). Action is the order of the day here, not chitchat. Never mind that the bad guys, played by a crew of Russian, Serbian and German performers, are equally unintelligible. Between their heavy accents and Skrein’s pudding-thick Cockney delivery, I could barely discern half the dialogue. The four actresses - Loan Chabanol, Tatiana Pajkovic, Wenxia Yu and Gabriella Wright - are, respectively, French, Danish, Chinese and British. The car, viewers of the three previous movies. A fourth is guarding Frank’s father (Ray Stevenson), who is being held hostage as leverage, compelling Frank to assist the women in a convoluted revenge scheme against the Eastern European mobster (Radivoje Bukvic) who kidnapped them years ago, forcing them into prostitution. In The Transporter Refueled, a reboot of the French producer Luc Besson’s action series, the main returning cast member is a souped-up Audi. Here, his client and cargo turn out to be three women in identical black dresses and blond wigs who have just robbed a bank.
“Refueled” continues Frank’s adventures as a high-priced deliveryman for sketchy clients. Unsurprisingly, the new movie is a cut-rate affair, with a charisma-free leading man and an inane, slapdash story line. A terrible movie that apparently went down well in China, so they are financing 2 more The action sequences are mildly diverting but their determination to.
The series helped star Jason Statham hit a level of respectability. The films’ producers had asked him to sign on for three more films - without seeing a script, Statham said, and for less money for three movies than he normally would get paid for one.ĮuropaCorp went ahead and made “The Transporter Refueled” without him, substituting Ed Skrein (“Game of Thrones”) in the role of elite courier Frank Martin. There were three previous Transporter movies, and two of them were immensely fun to watch.
Here, we have a number of original sequences, including a couple of creative stunts and visuals we haven’t really seen before.Īll that said, the outlandish script and story, and the lack of star power, will only allow this "Transporter" to be refueled once.Jason Statham’s departure from the moderately successful and cartoonishly fun “Transporter” franchise, as the actor told Vulture this past spring, was purely a business decision. Most of today’s action sequences seem like white noise: we keep seeing the same thing over and over again, and it’s boring. Undoubtedly, fans attracted to this movie because of the "Transporter" brand will expect thrilling action sequences and stunts - and those are absolutely the strength of this movie. He’s not as gritty or charismatic as Statham, but he’s a fine actor with a much different physique, and a cool enough demeanor to keep us interested. The Transporter Refueled (French: Le Transporteur: LHéritage) is a 2015 English-language French action-thriller directed by Camille Delamarre, written by Bill Collage and Adam Cooper, and starring Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Gabriella Wright, Radivoje Bukvic, Anatole Taubman, and Tatiana Pajkovic. As it turns out, Skrein is more than adequate to the task. He was so good at it, it really is hard to image anyone else playing Frank. Statham had already garnered some attention for a couple of Guy Ritchie collaborations, but "The Transporter" was his breakout role as a leading man and action star. Having done this for a little while now, I know Ed’s going to get picked apart by some critics and fans for simply not being Jason Statham, who originated the role in 2002. But let’s talk about Ed Skrein, the actor who plays Frank Martin.