By: Paul Esquivel
Contrary to the title, The Transporter: Refueld is definitely running on E. From its’ start the engine stalls as if it was refueled with water, and that would make sense considering the movie feels just like a watered down idea of The Transporter with a younger Frank Martin. If you aren’t familiar The Transporter trilogy was about a total badass named Frank Martin, played Jason Statham, and reality wise, the first one was probably the best with the other two just having cooler action sequences but no substance really.
I wish I was reviewing the other films cause they are at least more fun,but in Refueled the fun is forced and the whole movie comes off as trying too hard.
WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD a.k.a I saved you the time of seeing this crappy crap of a movie.
Ed Skrein takes over as Franky-boy this time but his take on the character comes across as a more douchey-bitchy driver, vs. Statham’s douchey-reluctant hero. Skrein’s Transporter shares similarity in name with none of the personality of the original. Instead, he just bitches and complains all the time before snapping a one liner. This would be forgivable if he made up for this by being badass, but he doesn’t even come close to achieving that.
The fight scenes are just atrocious, to back pedal real quick, the film makes it a point to tell you about the beginning events that helped build our antagonist’s empire. This was in 1995 and after they do their thing it says “15 years later”. The film also goes out of its way to let you know all of the bad guys and our good guy have a military background, but none of that matters during any of the action scenes. Looking at how everyone fights, it’s as if they were trained by someone who watched the earlier films and practices BBJ in his parents garage.
Thinking about it, the movie is feels like it was made by some frat boys who wrote the script over the weekend while playing GTA V, sitting around pitching style over substance ideas. The fight choreography is so lame and has zero excitement; it was like the henchman didn’t get the memo that they weren’t suppose to be that obvious about waiting for the lead guy to hit you. Its hard to believe guys with all this training and background would have some of the worst fights in a movie I have had the displeasure of seeing. I mean, why make such a point to tell us if none of these skills show from the characters, or even matter for that sake.
The movie is extremely inconsistent and really tries to force everything they add to fit. Take Frank’s dad, played by Ray Stevenson, he is shown to posses a PhD and some kind of military prowess himself, but he gets kidnapped with a simple taser and shoved in a car trunk. Next, even though he should know better, he accepts a beer from his kidnappers, and guess what, the beer is poisoned and Frank has to play ball if he wants the antidote. But then wait, it gets way more dumb than that, it’s not really poison, its just water!
Each little twist is so fucking lazy, actually, the entire movie is lazy, it’s like they took a step back instead of forward with the franchise. While this film won’t kill the franchise, it really didn’t do it any favors either. The action sequences are dull and who ever the fuck said this movie was “edge of your seat fun!” lied. This movie is bad and everyone involved in it should feel bad. Ok maybe not feel bad, but do better.
