The Transporter Refueled

Stunningly awful… I felt like I was watching robots mechanically delivering an emotionally vapid performance. Now if this was a pre-take walk through, it could be forgiven but as the final cut, it was deplorable. Only the father exuded some warmth and presence as a character that one could identify with and appreciate. The sheer lack of depth of the other characters was only matched by the lame attempts to humanize them. I am nearly speechless at how artificial the attempts were. Not sure if this was due to a really bad script, bad directing or terrible editing. I think the women made a valiant effort to give some dimension to their characters but in the end the whole enterprise was a sinking ship and the cast knew it….

One man's trash, another man's treasure and all that, scavengers rummaging through garbage are always optimistic about finding something of value. Not here. Before I begin to hack this film to pieces (to find anything of value of course), let's start with an old school adage – Point blame at someone and there's always three fingers pointing back at you. In relating that saying to this fourth installment of The Transporter franchise, as long as cinema goers are dumb enough to pay hard earned money to watch just about anything, then absolute junk will be recycled over and over again. For The Transporter Refueled, that's just the outer layer of decomposition.

With none of the cast and crew from the previous films, Refueled runs on fumes even before it goes into first gear. Replacing Jason Statham as the titular protagonist, Ed Skrein's Frank Martin often says "buckle up". Problem is, the film doesn't budge past the first gear and neither does the Audi A8 that replaces the BMW 7-series, the Mercedes S-class or the Lamborghini Murciélago from the previous films. Very early in the film, the Audi does a cool trick until it immediately dawns on you that a Pontiac Trans Am called "Kitt" did this trick over thirty years ago. And while the previous films were an exhibition of brawn over brain, this pathetic excuse of an action film has neither, nor does it seem to care. Somewhere between an elaborate plan where prostitutes revolt against their pimps, the so called action consists of hand-to-hand combat and three car chases. Blink and you'll miss the third chase – Martin on a jetski versus the villain in a Mercedes G-class…on land! Equally cringe worthy is the father-son bonding (Ray Stevens as Martin's dad) which is as effective as securing a square peg in a round hole. Dig deeper and you'll find that Refueled is not only poorly scripted, acted and directed to such an appalling extent, it's very making is a blatant insult to anyone paying to watch this film. But if you do watch this garbage, don't say I didn't warn you.

If you can sit through it, the stench of vomit lasts about 90 minutes. Unfortunately, cinemas don't come with barf bags like airplanes do, so passing your popcorn bucket to the next person is the only way viewers can relieve themselves of nausea. On the positive side, it must be noted that there's hope for film school rejects. If anything, Refueled is a classic example that any Tom, Dick and Harriet can make a movie. I can just imagine the hiring notice for the fifth film - Apply within, no skill required.

While Jason Statham might not possess incredible acting, he's a great fit for Transporter. He looks suave and confident, more importantly he looks capable in action sequences. Ed Skrein only amounts to carbon copy lookalike with accent.

Considering it's now stuck with poorly edited choreography for the scuffle, there's barely a trail of usual high octane ride. However, the worst offender is the awful script, bordering on cheap fantasy or softcore porn, the fact that it quotes The Three Musketeers so often is a literature travesty.

A group of prostitutes concocts a ridiculously intricate plan to topple their mafia boss. The Transporter is caught up in the struggle and forced to help them. Story relies on blind luck, coincidences, characters' stupidity and baseless arbitrary events. In other words, it's a complete and utter mess. Forget coherency or plausibility, the movie plays by its own faulty logic.

Unfortunately, the usual captivating fights or engaging chases are nowhere to be found. The movie opts for terrible editing and epileptic camera work instead. It's actually sad that the quirky yet brutal fighting scenes are replaced with such poor production. At the very least previous Transporters' fight is over-the-top fun, this is just confusingly bland.

Script is so awful, almost everything they say sound like 80's macho gibberish, one-liner from porn parody or silly used car commercial. I've high tolerance for cheesy lines, but when the characters literally pose for camera every five minutes to utter these insanely ludicrous lines, it's not even funny anymore.

Like before, Transporter must have damsel-in-distress, now it thinks a group of these attractive ladies would replace narrative. Audience might get juvenile guilty pleasure from the these blond short bob misses with minimal dress or a couple of nifty chases, but these gimmicks are shallow and the best they could do is slightly boost the movie rating if one is generous enough in reviewing it.

With the amount of plot holes and poor choreography it must go through, the end product is unrecognizable wreckage.

It's sad to see this movie flop this bad, really. It really had the huge risk of at least deliver something equivalent of the original trilogy. But doing this movie without any of the previous trilogy's creative minds is really a big mistake. The people behind the creative process for this movie clearly didn't know what they were doing. They only tried so hard to recreate the Jason Statham's Frank Martin persona with the mannerisms and the unique fight sequences. But in doing so they really pitted Ed Skrein with the old Jason Statham performance, on which everyone can really choose who's the winner. Not having Jason Statham is by itself a big burden due to Ed Skrein still fails to live up to the Statham persona. The story also seems very flat, nothing new or unpredictable is being offered by this movie. And the biggest sin is the editing.there are so many editing mistakes that takes away the fun in watching the action scenes. The acting overall is so bad that I don't deign to write about each actors' performances.

Ed Skrein doesn't hold a candle to Jason Statham in this role, try though he might. The actual plot is not too bad, with I wouldn't say twists and turns, but maybe the odd curved ball, to keep the viewer interested. Many of the stunts are pretty good. Some of the acting, though, is atrocious.