If Frank was an uber driver I would give him a poor rating; a nice car but a forgettable and too often dull ride.
I find it hard to believe that Jason Statham turned this down. He doesn’t seem to turn much down. But with Statham being Statham elsewhere, the decision to bring in fresh blood might be understandable, but it backfires terribly here. In fact the casting from top to bottom is dire.
Nu-Frank is tall and slender, not especially handsome and not at all charismatic. Try as I might to picture him now and all I come up with is the weird underground fight promoter from Danny the Dog, and I haven’t seen that film for a few years.
As for everyone else, good guys, bad guys, neutral guys, they all talk like they’re in a strict library after smoking two packs of cigarettes. But for the refreshing Ray Stevenson as Frank’s horny dad, this might be the world’s first all-whispered-in-heavy-accents film.
And on to the film. Frank takes on a job that seems a simple pick up and drop off of three female contestants of an international Sia lookalike search, only to become embroiled in a game of cat and mouse with a not especially dangerous Russian prostitution syndicate (they have business cards…)
The impossibly planned scheme involves annoyingly random developments and unlikely coincidences to work, and of course it all does, but the script is like a Bond film hit with a hammer. In one sequence Frank ditches his familiar Audi A8 in an underground car park and hustles his passengers to the next car, an ever so slightly lighter coloured Audi A8.
Perhaps when you are entirely beholden to sponsors and product placement you ditch such stupid happenings?
The cops only appear to flail about in Frank’s wake. They do not drive Audi A8s, and are therefore doomed to crash into each other, inanimate objects and other random cars in Blues Brothers-ian fashion. It would all be quite comical if it weren’t so depressingly familiar.
With so many characters attempting to play it cool but coming off like they’re sleepwalking, only Stevenson stands out, even if it is just because he seems to have a pulse, something this film certainly does not.
So we have a carefree and horny older man who finds the danger and peril a tad boring and not worthy of concern, and a large group of stone faced characters who can’t find a reason to even pretend to be excited.
They’re both right.
I found all three Statham Transporters varying degrees of mediocre. This is far worse. Far, far, far worse…
Final Rating – 4.5 / 10. Poorly conceived (and hopefully franchise killing) tripe.
