inspectors71
Mel Gibson's career exploded, he did a remake of the Richard Stark novel about a thief who is double-crossed and rains down vengeance. It was called Payback. Payback was a remake of John Boorman's superb Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin. There's another remake out there with Robert Duvall called The Outfit.To paraphrase George C. Scott in Hardcore, "Turn it off! For the love of God, turn it off!"It was a great story, originally. The Boorman movie was surreal and psychotic, at least until you realized you were watching a ghost story. There were parts of the Duvall flick that were pretty good. Watching Sheree North parade around in that little bathrobe thingy comes to mind. The Gibson flick was good until we got involved with a weird black van filled with ninja hit-people socking and punching in the street.But stop the remakes, alright? I was sort of involved in this absurd actioner (absurdity, defined as watching Jason Statham jumping out of a car at 55 miles per hour, getting shot, and getting better) when up pops Jennifer Lopez, a woman who can act, but apparently chose not to here. When realtor Lopez shows up, the movie crashes, and never recovers.The crimes themselves are big, splashy heists that stretch the viewer's tolerance of absurdity to the limit. Statham sleepwalks through everything he does, except for when he adopts a ridiculous Texas drawl (when he slips, Lopez chirps, "I just knew you weren't from Texas!").Michael Chiklis and Nick Nolte are wasted in their parts, and the character list in general is so murky that the viewer has to accept that somebody got peeved when somebody did something to somebody else, and where the Hell did Statham get those guns after he gets fished out of a canal after being shot and stabbed and gored and mutilated and made fun of by his nasty compatriots?Am I, possibly, overthinking here?Yup.Suffice it to say that if the mere thought of shooting and stabbing and goring and mutilating is all you need in a movie, Taylor Hackford's 85th remake of a crime novel written once, Parker, will be all you'll ever need.
juneebuggy
This was pretty good, especially if you're a Jason Statham fan and just sit back and enjoy the ride. It was actually better than I was expecting in some respects since I wasn't to keen on the whole Jennifer Lopez aspect going in but she plays a desperate, past her prime sort of character and thankfully not a love interest, so that worked for me.Not as many flashy fight scenes from Statham here but still enough good ones with unique aspects (knife through hand, chair to trachea, dive out car window) to keep me more than interested. He gets beat up real bad a couple of times here with a serious amount of bloodshed.I also had to laugh at his attempt at being a Texan, yeah the accent was terrible but I think it was meant to be.Statham is a professional thief here, an anti-hero with a unique code of ethics who is double-crossed and left for dead by his former partners, then spends the remainder of the movie seeking revenge (and to hijack the crew's latest heist) while getting help from a real estate agent (Jennifer Lopez).This was kind of a long movie, going to multiple directions and several locations, and with a plot that wasn't as predictable as most action/ revenge thrillers tend to be, so I enjoyed those aspects. Nick Nolte plays a small role as Parkers girlfriend's dad, a career criminal, and the band of bad guys was atypical but still decent and entertaining for antagonists. I liked the opening heist scene at the fair, where Parker is a priest (he dons several different disguises in this) which was amusing. 3/22/15
rps-2
Hollywood does best making dreadful, violent, amoral, macho films that cater to psychotics and people with animal tastes. Those who enjoy cock fighting and bare knuckled boxing probably will enjoy this film and others like it. Significantly, not one of the characters in the movie has a shred of decency. Everybody wears a black hat all the time. They are all detestable,brutal,scheming, unpleasant people. Even the cop is more interested in sexual predation than law enforcement. A splendid cast of role models for aspiring crooks, punks and goons. The graphic violence surpasses even the worst "spaghetti western" and the "f-word" is fired again and again and again. Movies are the literature of a modern society. This cinematic excrescence both portrays and contributes to the dangerous and degenerate moral swamp of modern American society.
mm-39
Parker is set in a 1970's profession criminal genre aka Charles Bronson style. Statham is typecast-ed like Bronson in a professional criminal role. Strong, silent, intense with a soft spot for the right people. I believe we will not be seeing Statham in a comedy or romance! Parker's story is interesting in the beginning with the character development robbery, and ends strongly with another robbery/revenge conclusion. Regrettably, Parker's story falters with the Jennifer Lopez character. Why would Parker trust the character, which disjoints the story. I thought Lopez's cop friend would create a interesting plot twist, which never developed. The action scenes, and acting was good, but the director lost the feel and energy for Parker with little character development. Compared to Porter in Payback or Driver in The Driver, Parker is missing the synergy of strong characters intermixed with the movie's story. Parker reminds me of the one of those 1970s Charles Bronson films (Mr Majestic) which is more formulated and loses movie chemistry in the process. Six out of ten.
AD
