“Parker,” for all intents and purposes, is a typical Jason Statham movie. However, that does not mean the movie is a typical shoot-em-up and get the hot babe film, as one might assume after watching the trailer. Loosely based on the novel “Flashfire” by Donald E. Westlake (who wrote under the pen name Richard Stark), “Parker” gets to the roots of the eponymous character in a way that previous film adaptations of Stark’s books did not.
The movie begins with the slightly unusual robbery of the ticket house at the Ohio State Fair, a scene used mainly to highlight just how different Parker is from the rest of his thuggish crew. “I don’t steal from anyone who can’t afford it, and I don’t hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it,” Parker tells an extremely nervous security guard who fears for his life in the hands of the robbers. While it may be a stretch to call Parker a modern-day Robin Hood, it is fair to say that Parker has a strict set of moral standards by which he will abide and which he is not willing to compromise.
Unfortunately, the other robbers in the crew aren’t so understanding of Parker’s sense of honor. After a disagreement about what to do with the stolen money, Parker jumps from a car, is shot by his partners and is left for dead on the side of the road.
Thankfully, he is saved by a kind-hearted rural family, and from there the plot slowly dissolves into glorified aerial shots of Los Vegas, tense exchanges of dialogue where the f-word is horribly abused and bloody brawls in which the victor is determined by who can dodge the most bullets. If you were to compare “Parker” to other Jason Statham films, this one would be a little bit like “The Transporter” meets the 2003 remake of “The Italian Job” with a touch of “The Bank Job”. Fairly easy to imagine, right?
However, there is a reason for the increasingly number of similar films starring Statham. He can carry even the most generic plot, and turn it into something you might actually enjoy watching. Statham is horridly typecasted nearly every single time he appears in a movie, but he can convincingly pull off that type of character: gruff, tough and full of snarky, sarcastic comebacks, but not without a strict sense of morals and decency. Jason Statham’s Parker isn’t the ruthless, cold-hearted thief of the novels. This Parker is sassy and chock-full of witty comments, such as “I don’t drink coffee after seven” in response to the question of he gets to sleep at night. Dogs simply adore him, and he tolerates their drooly affection.
And even though he’s a thief, he’s not really a bad guy. The audience doesn’t get a lot of humanization of Parker, but Statham takes the few traits given to his character and runs with them.
Unlike Statham, Jennifer Lopez does not play the role one might expect from her in a such a film. Lopez plays Leslie, a struggling real estate agent whose life is not going in any way, shape or form the direction she probably hoped it would. Leslie is nowhere near as sarcastic as Parker, but she does have her own charm; the dogged determination of someone who knows she is in way over her head but is too stubborn to back out. Of course, this perseverance may be exactly what annoys some people about Leslie, but in a world of Bond Babes and Evelyn Salts, Leslie is a mildly refreshing change of pace.
She doesn’t know a million different kinds of kick butt martial arts, and she’s terrified of someone waving a loaded gun in her face, but the lure of millions of dollars is more than enough temptation for Leslie to continually offer her aid to Parker, even after he turns her down.
And apart from a very unfortunate strip tease that was most likely added in just to keep the male audience members engaged, Lopez looks and dresses like the 40-something down-on-her-luck woman she is trying to portray.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is less entertaining. Nick Nolte plays some sort of aging, small-time kingpin; he is the one who hooks Parker and his gang up with the original county fair robbery, but later on begs Parker not to pursue his former teammates to Miami. Emma Booth is Claire, the girlfriend to whom Parker is always faithful, even after Leslie’s little strip. However, Claire adds little to the film and is nothing more than a plot device to give Parker a tad more characterization.
Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce, Clifton Collins Jr. and Michah Hauptman, play the really bad thieves who betray Parker in the beginning of the film, are all utterly and completely boring. The promise of millions of dollars in diamonds would undoubtedly turn anyone into a violent, flat caricature of himself, but these four really take it to the extreme.
“Parker” is probably not going to be winning any awards any time soon. And while Jason Statham’s characters may be as tough and manly as any version of James Bond, he’ll probably never get the same amount of media attention as, say, Daniel Craig. Like most of Statham’s movies, “Parker” was entertaining to watch and mildly enjoyable to write about. But now that it’s done, I think this film will be easily forgettable.
