{"id":12393,"date":"2025-07-07T23:51:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T03:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12393"},"modified":"2025-07-07T23:51:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T03:51:23","slug":"the-transporter-refueled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/07\/07\/the-transporter-refueled\/","title":{"rendered":"The Transporter Refueled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Transporter Refueled <\/strong>(2015)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 EuropaCorp Distribution\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 96 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sequences of violence and action, sexual material, some language, a drug reference, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Camille Delamarre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Luc Besson, Bill Collage and Adam Cooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Alexandre Azaria\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Christophe Collette\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 4, 2015 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Loan Chabanol, Gabriella Wright, Tatjana Pajkovic, Wenxia Yu, Radivoje Bukvic, Noemie Lenoir , Lenn Kudjawizki, Anatole Taubman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $16M (US)\/$72.6M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0With The Transporter Refueled<\/strong>, the franchise is officially out of gas. I knew something was wrong when the studio moved its release from June to the last weekend of summer. That\u2019s always a bad sign.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s lame for reasons other than new lead star Ed Skrein (Game of Thrones) who\u2019s clearly no substitute for Jason Statham. Statham would eat this wimp for breakfast. Statham looks like he can do serious harm to anybody dumb enough to wrong him. There\u2019s absolutely nothing intimidating about the British rapper-turned-actor. His line readings sound like somebody doing a bad impression of Statham. He completely lacks the dry wit of his predecessor. As Frank Martin aka \u201cThe Transporter\u201d, Skrein isn\u2019t at all convincing. He\u2019s more like a random guy just standing in until the real guy shows up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Another big misstep is taking away the mystique of the character by bringing his spy father (Stevenson, Thor) into the story. In the original movies, we knew nothing about Frank\u2019s past except that he was with Special Forces. In The Transporter Refueled<\/strong>, his father calls him \u201cJunior\u201d and criticizes him for his faults (e.g. his tendency to be tardy). What worked in the third Indiana Jones movie fails miserably here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot, which actually feels more like a rejected Taken script, has Frank going up against Russian mob boss Karasov (Bukvic, A Good Day to Die Hard) who made his fortune by forcing girls as young as 12 into prostitution. I\u2019m sure he commits other illegal acts, but the emphasis is on forced prostitution. It isn\u2019t Frank\u2019s choice to take on Karasov (a former Special Forces colleague, by the way); he\u2019s part of larger revenge scheme cooked up four of his girls. Anna (Chabanol, Third Person), the ringleader, hires him services- ostensibly as a getaway driver- but breaks one of his cardinal rules (the one about changing the terms of the original deal) by bringing along two accomplices. In order to ensure Frank\u2019s compliance, they\u2019ve kidnapped his father and will only release him when they\u2019ve returned safely to their hideout. Only that isn\u2019t the end of it. They want to destroy their soon-to-be-former boss and need Frank\u2019s help to do it. Once again, they leave him no choice but to aid them in their mission of revenge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot and fight scenes in The Transporter Refueled<\/strong>, directed in rote fashion by Camille Delamarre (Brick Mansions), are very generic. The closest thing to a \u201cYEAH, RIGHT!\u201d moment is when Frank drives his car through an airport terminal, but even that feels perfunctory.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m a big fan of Luc Besson, I thought last year\u2019s Lucy was awesome, but one gets the impression that his involvement with The Transporter Refueled<\/strong> is minimal. It doesn\u2019t have the same unique flavor as the previous three installments. The fight scenes don\u2019t have the same frenzied feel either. You don\u2019t feel the same thrill as when Statham beats up groups of bad guys. At one point, Skrein uses a life preserver to subdue an opponent, a move that\u2019s more Jackie Chan than Statham. In another scene, Frank Sr. goes all MacGyver when he treats a bullet wound using sugar, vodka, perfume and cobwebs. I actually liked Stevenson\u2019s character, kind of a letch really, jumping into bed with his hooker captors a la James Bond. He doesn\u2019t belong in this movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Besides the boilerplate storyline and lifeless action sequences, the dialogue and acting are awful. Even the French Riviera scenery seems dull. As hopelessly misguided and misconceived The Transporter Refueled<\/strong> is, it never rises above or sinks below mediocrity. It\u2019s just like any other Hollywood actioner. Not only is it a completely unnecessary reboot, it\u2019s a completely unnecessary movie. They didn\u2019t need to fix what wasn\u2019t broken. If anything, it\u2019s a downgrade. Only Statham might have been able to save it, but he\u2019s got better things to do. This particular make and model should be discontinued.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Transporter Refueled (2015)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 EuropaCorp Distribution\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 96 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sequences of violence and action, sexual material, some language, a drug reference, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Camille Delamarre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Luc Besson, Bill Collage and Adam Cooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Alexandre Azaria\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Christophe Collette\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 4, 2015 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Loan Chabanol, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-sequels-remakes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/The-Transporter-Refueled-PI.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12393"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12476,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12393\/revisions\/12476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}