Entertainment Desk :
Laced with revenge, romance and father-son bonding, The Transporter Refueled is a sleekly presented gangster film. The fourth from The Transporter franchise, released seven years after its last instalment.
Set in the French Riveira, the narration starts off with events of 1995 where the Russian Mafia takes over the underworld operations.
Fifteen years later, Frank (Ed Skrein), a clandestine courier operator reunites with his father Frank Sr (Ray Stevenson), an ex-sales representative who was also a secret government spy agent.
And while Frank continues transporting stuff around, he gets a call from the gorgeous Anna (Loan Chabanol), who hires him to help her crew of three similarly beautiful, blonde-wigged accomplices; Gina (Gabriella Wright), Maria (Tatiana Pajkovic) and Qiao (Wenxia Yu) to transport some consignment from a bank.
Little does he realise that he is being conned and coerced into their bigger scheme of things which include them seeking revenge on Arkady Karasov (Radivoje Bukvic), the Russian human trafficker who had forced them into prostitution. Inadvertently, Frank Sr too gets involved in their ploy.
While this seems like a simple straight narration, the writers Bill Collage, Adam Cooper and Luc Besson, take a convoluted path.
The wafer-thin plot-line, is made complex with scattershot logic and reckless action sequences, to keep the story moving.
Also, there is inconsistency in terms of characterisation and tone of the narration. The ladies shuttle from being strong, cold and calculating assassins to helpless seductresses randomly.
On the performance front, Ed Skrein with a stubble and a well-chiselled physique, as Frank Jr in this edition, does not match his predecessor, Jason Statham’s charisma. But nevertheless, he is machismo personified and makes his presence felt with ample action sequences and limited dialogues.
