★★☆☆☆

<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

 

Directed by Camille Delamarre. Starring Ed Skrein, Loan Chabanol, Ray Stevenson

Hollywood is remaking and rehashing everything they can put their hands on nowadays. Zero creative ideas or writing in Hollywood what! Zilch, nada, nothing. They got zip in their brains, so much so that they’re rebooting franchises that are not more than seven years old.

 

But surprisingly, The Transporter: Refueled isn’t that bad. Certainly not as bad as Taken 2 (edited by director Camille Delamarre). It just isn’t very original or amazing. Does Ed Skrein manage to fill the big shoes of Jason Statham as Frank Martin? Just barely. He gets all the action right and even the tone of his voice and he certainly has the screen presence. What he lacks is Statham’s ability to deliver those tongue-in-cheek one-liners and project brute force with just his eyes.

In Refueled, Frank Martin is hired by Ana (Loan Chabanol), a former prostitute who along with her three female accomplices (also former prostitutes), wants to take revenge on their pimp who ruined their lives. Frank and his father (Ray Stevenson) get caught up in their ‘transport’, which turns into a lot more, as you’d expect. An intricate game ensues as the sexy femme fatales execute their plan with the help of Frank who really only turns out to be the driver cum bodyguard for the girls. In fact, his ex-spy father plays a more important – and far more interesting – role as he saves one of the girls who’s been shot and helps them accost another bad guy on a plane. He then goes on to have a threesome with the girl he saves and one of the other girls who he likes. Of course, that’s censored here in India, so don’t bother keeping your hopes up for it. Just go transport yourself to your computer or DVD guy.

 

Camille Delamarre is pretty good with the action scenes and everything looks very slick. In fact, Audi should probably hire him to do an ad for them. Oh wait, they already did. It’s called The Transporter: Refueled!

While this film is passable and average action entertainment it could easily have been called anything else and didn’t really need to have the Transporter moniker apart from trying to cash in on the franchise’s popularity. Can you imagine them refuelling the Fast & Furious franchise after a few years? Another 10 films of that utter nonsense. Is it the studios we should blame or the audiences?

 

 

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