It’s an option Frank himself wishes he had as well when the simple bank robbery turns into a complicated blackmail scheme against France’s biggest pimp and the bullets start flying.

Not bothering with subtleties like coherence or human emotions means it can cross borders easily with its essence more or less intact. The native understanding required to make many forms of drama or comedy work don’t always survive the cultural divide, but explosions and hitting someone in the face with a fire hose translates into every language. The lack of experimentation (or depth) shouldn’t come as any surprise, not because this is the fourth film in a series and the formula is (usually) well set by that point, but because the pressure to create easily transportable entertainment for the growing global audience has made this sort of ersatz change common as focus shifts to broadly understandable gags. Think less Casino Royale and more On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, though not anywhere near as good as either of those films. The degree to which that sounds familiar to previous Transporter films is certainly intentional such that – even with a complete cast flip – The Transporter Refueled is easily of a piece with every other film in the series, from its one-note hero to the whiff of anti-immigration prejudice surrounding its villain. Which is usually where the trouble starts for Frank and it’s as true this time as every other when said beautiful woman (Loan Chabanol) hires him as a getaway driver for what turns out to be a daring bank heist. He only seems to care ‘when,’ ‘where’ and ‘how heavy’ … and inevitably throws his rules out the door when a beautiful woman comes knocking. (Note for people who keep using the word wrong: a sequel and a reboot are not the same thing, even with a cast change.) These sort of things rely on a simple, straightforward set of rules just as professional transporter Frank Martin (Skrein) does.

But once done it is very seldom undone, suggesting audience taste in aggregate does not change very much even over generations, and leaving even the now ubiquitous reboot more of an exercise in wheel spinning than anything else.

Transporter refueled movie cast