“The Transporter Refueled” is a story of bodies: sleek, curvy, luscious bodies, purring for action and ready to let you do anything to them. They’re hotties, these Audis.
If only the movie were as fast and streamlined. Instead, in a relaunch of the so-so “Transporter” franchise — turn-of-the-century nostalgia time! — the mysterious driver/kung fu fighter Frank Martin (Ed Skrein) is hired to drive around a few pissed-off prostitutes seeking revenge against their gangster pimps.
The original Transporter — driver — was played impeccably by Jason Statham, who makes otherwise-bad movies more than watchable. Now the role is filled by Skrein (“Game of Thrones”), who brings ragged features, a shopkeeper’s accent, a single facial expression (mild pout) and just as many tones of voice. A star he is not.
In a swank hotel on the Riviera, a shady beauty hires him on a mission, the details of which he’d rather not know: She, Anna (Loan Chabanol), is an unwilling prostitute who, along with three other sex slaves, wants to clean out the bank accounts of, and then murder, their gangster-pimp Yuri (Yuri Kolokolnikov).
Doing so will involve many pauses for clubbing, sipping Champagne and posing in fabulous frocks and wigs: In their secret hideout, each girl has a rack of designer ready-to-wear that they fuss with the way Frank loves his Audis.
To keep Frank motivated, they kidnap his secret-agent dad, Frank Sr. (Ray Stevenson, the movie’s most enjoyable presence). This isn’t the father’s first rodeo, so when he’s poisoned and learns he has 12 hours or so to live, he settles down with some vodka and sets to work seducing one of his sexy captors.
The old man is the only interesting element in the movie: Everyone else is so busy trying to be cool and sexy that they forget to breathe. Skrein — sorry, mate, not a movie-star name — is so dull, he’s virtually animatronic. When he hooks up with Anna, his interest level is so lukewarm, you suspect he’s wondering if his car will ever find out he cheated on her.
Junior refuses to use a gun, so he battles in wacky, Jackie Chan style — beating thugs senseless with file drawers or imprisoning them in life preservers. The manic wit isn’t there, though — director Camille Delamarre, who’s partial to frantic editing and musical cues straight out of “MacGyver,” can’t make anything seem fresh. Even the car chases, which involve much high-speed vehicular smashing, barely raise the pulse: Mainly Frank gets chased by those little meep-meep Eurocop cars that are about as threatening as a swarm of poodles.
If you’re looking for the frisson of lunacy that powered so many Jason Statham films, you’ll be disappointed. Even when a couple of central characters get shot, the movie shrugs. I’ve seen lines at the post office that moved with more urgency and passion than “The Transporter Refueled.”