Transporter Refueled: A mediocre addition to a fantastic trilogy

Photo+Courtesy%3A+Forbes.com

Photo Courtesy: Forbes.com

The Transporter Refueled can be described in one word, meh. Except for a few decent action scenes, it’s a mediocre movie that doesn’t really have much to offer. It deserves its place at the back end of top Summer movies and its disappointing box office results.

The Transporter movies are about Frank Martin, a man who makes a living by transporting packages for people. Transporter refueled is the fourth movie in the Transporter series. The first one is good, the second was bizarre but enjoyable, and the third one was bad. But, Refueled was by far my least favorite.

While my favorite part of these movies was the martial arts scenes, the over editing of these movies have made the viewing experience less than enjoyable for me.

In Refueled, Jason Statham is replaced with Ed Skrein for the role of Frank Martin, the movie’s main character. Although Skrein’s character is far more talkative than Statham, I find that Statham’s character more charming and superior to Skrein.

In the movie, Ray Stevenson acts as a comic relief character whose monologue is vaguely connected to what’s going on, but is extremely humorous.

However, and I cannot stress this enough, Jason Statham is THE Transporter. Skrein is a poor replacement for Statham. Skrein doesn’t have a whole lot of charisma or presence, especially in comparison to Statham. This is one of the things that makes it such a mediocre film. When the lead isn’t good actor or does not fit a particular role, it makes it difficult to enjoy a film.

This is a small nitpick, but apparently the writers either think that we’ve been in a sort of technological stasis since 2010, or they can’t count. The movie opens with a sequence taking place in 1995, but doesn’t really look like it. Then, the movie cuts to 15 years later, which leaves the events of the movie taking place in 2010. However, that’s likely to be a mistake, since it contains technology and product placement from 2015. This is so sloppy that it’s kind of a shock that it wasn’t corrected by anyone.

This dumb action movie attempts to be “smart” by making parallels, referencing, and quoting lines from Alexandre Dumas’s “The Three Musketeers”. Certainly, it comes off as a pretentious move to make the movie seem more intelligent than it really is. But when it comes to themes, Transporter lacks the ones I admired in the first one. The first one’s themes were of preciseness, and the breaking and enforcing of rules, which I really liked.

That said, the action scenes are well put together, although they were unrealistic at times, especially when someone drives a car through an airport terminal. The martial arts are well choreographed. There’s a decent amount of over the top ridiculousness, including a fight scene with three janitors who refuse to give Skrein the key to leave the room.

Overall, this is a mediocre action movie with a bad lead actor. You probably shouldn’t see it, and you won’t be able to see it in about three weeks due to opening at #5 at the box office, joining Hitman: Agent 47 and Fantastic Four in the flop pile of the summer blockbuster season. However, I do recommend seeing the other Transporter movies, specifically one and two.