Eastern European gangsters, human trafficking schemes, chases that transition from French cobblestones to seafaring yachts: they’re all here, fitted and tailored to the same model of character and action movie Statham is better off lampooning these days than revisiting. The remainder of this fourth entry comprises the same hodgepodge of Besson plot points that the Taken movies once borrowed, and have now returned to their original owner. This is the extent of the personality to be found in the “Transporter” series, and its hero, Frank Martin. It stars a rakish Brit who dresses like a limo driver, rolls in a German car, and fights as a wuxia/MMA hybrid.

Seven years distanced from the last “Transporter” movie, Refueled struggles to hit established marks. When Besson and company happen upon a winning formula, they seemingly can’t stop themselves from driving it into the ground. What those two have in common is that they’re neither adaptations, nor sequels to other Europacorp movies, which tend to get dumber and less fun in reiteration or translation. That same year, Besson unleashed the Taken franchise on the world, a once-promising series that’s become the most profitable alignment of Franco-American interests since the War of Independence.īesson’s Europacorp production company, in addition to funding Tommy Lee Jones’ directorial career, has made a number of legitimately enjoyable dumb-fun action movies, including the daffy Lockout, and last year’s megahit Lucy.

Though the franchise has been kept on dialysis via a TV series for a couple years, this is the first “Transporter” property to be produced by series-creator Luc Besson since 2008’s Transporter 3. Returning sans Statham, avec everything else, The Transporter: Refueled makes a poor case for rescuing this series from the scrapheap. As a whole, however, the three movies were a shoddy refurbishing of American gearhead actioneers into Euro-thriller jalopies. The first one had a fight scene where Jason Statham whirled around poles and through grease like a lethal Magic Mike the second featured cinema’s first aerial undercarriage bomb disposal the third contrived a reason to always keep Statham within 75 feet of the franchise’s real star, an Audi automobile. Stripped and chopped for parts, the Transporter trilogy could be reassembled into a single solid (and undoubtedly short) action movie.

Transporter refueled movie 2015