The Transporter Refueled

Summer is officially over, September is here, and the movies stink. While the big releases and heavy-hitters of the fall movie season make the festival rounds or rev up their marketing campaigns, audiences have to tough it out and wade through a lot of not-so-good movies. Welcome to September. It’s like this every year. Get ready for an excruciating month at the movies and at the box office.

They are rebooting The Transporter series this week. I don’t know why.

As much as we adore Jason Statham, we’ll never pretend that he’s picky about his projects. Roughly half of the time spent being a fan of that scowling, head-butting British import involves suffering through his poor choices. So it’s weird to watch the new trailer for The Transporter Refueled and realize that this was the point where Statham decided “Nah, I’m good,” removing the one and only thing that could possibly make us interested in a fourth movie in this series.

A new trailer for the latest installment in the Transporter franchise has arrived, filled with crazy car stunts and crazier action, and a brand new leading man by way of Game of Thrones star Ed Skrein. Skrein takes on the Jason Statham role in The Transporter Refueled, which looks pretty much like every other Transporter movie, minus Statham.

“Is this the Transporter?” Those are the first words of this teaser for The Transporter Refueled, the reboot of the Euro-action series about the world’s best-dressed, most deadly delivery man. And I want to answer that question, no; this is decidedly not the Transporter. The Transporter is Jason Statham, or at least it was Jason Statham, through the franchise’s first three movies. Statham, alas, has departed, leaving Ed Skrein to assume Frank Martin’s black suit-and-tie-and-Audi.