The Transporter franchise is synonymous with the name Jason Statham, but the same old story and faces were getting just a bit stale. So creator Luc Besson decided that a reboot was needed and so was born The Transporter: Refuelled.
Having worked on Transporter 3 and the TV series Camille Delamarre now takes to the Directors chair and Ed Skrein takes over from the regular face of Jason Statham as Frank Martin to add that much-needed fresh young blood to give this franchise a much-needed injection of life and maybe just a new audience.
Frank Martin (Ed Skrein) is back and with his reputation in the French Riviera’s criminal underworld very much set in stone as the best driver money can buy. Frank only has three rules no names, no questions and no renegotiations. With this being his constant motto Frank meets with Anna (Loan Chabanol), a beautiful career prostitute hell bent on revenge against a Russian kingpin for all the years of pain and suffering she has had to endure at his hands. Accepting the job as getaway driver for a clever bank robbery, Frank is cunningly tricked by Anna and her two accomplices, whom of which are all, dressed the same in the same blonde wig, as they make their getaway in a high-speed police chase across town. A fourth member of this femme-fatale group of woman is revealed when we witness Frank’s Father, Frank Martin Sr. (Ray Stevenson) being kidnapped in order to retain the services of Frank Junior to carry out their master plan.
For once it’s extremely refreshing to see an action based film being very much dominated by strong female characters and especially out-smarting the lead character in order to get what they want. It gives a very positive message that just because you’re beautiful and sexy doesn’t mean you’re dumb. This kind of storyline is very much a rarity in these types of films, making this very appealing to the female audience too.
With any action film, there is always a danger of over-doing to the action, with non-stop fighting and car chases from start to finish. Whilst we see a hell of a lot of this in The Transporter: Refuelled there is actually an interesting story to go along with it which building back stories around our main characters giving the audience a rare chance to connect and to get to know the characters as the reveal a more human side. This is especially prevalent in the relationship we witness between Frank and his Father.
The fight scenes are also a lot slicker and you can tell that the makers have moved away from the kung-fu style of fighting and have gone with the more brutal street-fight style to give it a more authentic edge. Of course with anything so heavily female based we also get that love interest story thrown in two when Frank succumbs to the charms of the very sexy Anna after him and his father save the life of one of the girls when she is shot.
With stunning views of the sun-drenched Cote D’Azur, The Transporter: Refuelled is action packed with your standard fight scenes and car chases but feels Fresh, slick and classy with a more character driven, humanised storyline.
The Transporter: Refuelled is out in UK Cinemas on the 4th of September 2015.