It's been a pretty good movie week for me my
friends. A terrible week for the genre, but a pretty
good week for me nonetheless. In the past few days I've
seen Tom Cruise in 'Jack Reacher' which I thought was very
good, Schwarzenegger in 'The Last Stand' which was also very
entertaining, Stallone in 'Bullet to the Head' which was
probably the most entertaining of these movies I've seen,
though Jack Reacher is a better 'movie' so to speak, and now
we have Statham in 'Parker', probably the weakest of the
bunch. Jason Statham playing a small badass who doesn't
shave and kicks much ass. Who knew he could do
that? But while I had a good time watching these movies,
most of you out there avoided them. And you can hear a
pin drop as the genre dies a sad and lonely death.
Parker (Statham) is a man of honor. Yeah, he's a
murdering thief but he'll only murder you if you cross him and
doesn't steal from anybody who can't afford to be stolen
from. I guess he's freaking Robin Hood. On this
particular day Parker has pulled off a major heist with some
scurrilous types and so impressed they were with Parker's
skills, Melander (Michael Chiklis), the leader of this crew,
asks Parker to help them out on their next gig. Parker
politely refuses. Apparently the answer of 'no' was not
an option with these cats, and the next thing you know Parker
is filled with bullet holes, tossed out on the freeway from
speeding SUV and dumped in swamp. He's dead. AS
IF!
You're average cat dragged down a freeway while filled with
bullet holes would be down for a minute or two, but Parker
quickly rights himself and gets prepared to serve up a cold
dish of revenge. Problem is that the people he has sworn
vengeance against are kind of connected, and Parker isn't
really a stealth kind of guy so everybody knows its Parker
causing trouble. This leads to them trying to kill
Parker's people, like his girlfriend Claire (Emma Booth) or
his future father in law and thief handler Hurley (Nick
Nolte). The bad guys fail at this, but this only makes
Parker even madder.
Parker needs to bust up whatever the crew
that turned on him has going down, which leads him to sunny
Palm Beach Florida. There he meets struggling Real
Estate agent Leslie Rogers as played by Jennifer Lopez.
I hate to get sidetracked… not really… but Good Lord is
Jennifer Lopez good looking. Every time I see this woman
she seems to get better looking. Me and Jennifer are
like exactly the same age, her being one day older than me,
but yet I'm not a beautiful 43 year old man, and that makes me
sad. Anyway, Leslie will act as Parker's guide around
Palm Beach, and eventually his partner in a way. Leslie,
beauty aside, is also one of the dumber characters in action
movie history.
The plan for the evil crew is to steal a bunch of
diamonds. The plan for Parker is to take these diamonds
from them, then kill them. The only thing that could
mess up Parker's fine plan is a distressed damsel, and how
this damsel becomes distressed almost dooms this entire
movie. Murder, mayhem and Statham doing that thing he
does shall ensue.
'Parker' is a Jason Statham movie, right? You wake up in
the morning and see Jason Statham in a movie and you know,
with almost 100% certainty, what you are going to get.
He's like a Twinkie or a Big Mac. The stories are
generally all the same, with the only thing changing are his
co-stars and his directors. Today's co-stars are pretty
darned good with Chiklis and Clifton Collins Jr. looking
completely oppressive as bad guys, Nick Nolte perfecting the
old and grizzled look and Jennifer Lopez looking
beautiful. Today's director is Taylor Hackford who
certainly knows how to navigate his way through controlled
chaos such as this. With these solid elements in place,
we have a completely competent, well crafted, marginally
enjoyable, if not a completely forgettable waste of
time.
The problem with this perfunctory waste of time is that I
think it was supposed be so much more. Based on the
Westlake pulp fiction novels and with a fairly impressive cast
of characters, I'm thinking we were supposed to get a pulpy,
tough, stylish kind of modern noir crime epic. Most
everybody in this movie fit the part for this kind of thing,
Chiklis as the oppressive bad guy, Lopez as the forlorn damsel
who only in a world such as this could be pining away lonely
in her mother's house, Nick Nolte as the grizzled, wise old
dude and a director who certainly has the style to bring
something like this home . But the minute Jason Statham
signed on the dotted line, 'Parker' becomes a Jason Statham
movie. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, it's
just more of the same old thing, that's all. Bobby
Cannavale is in this movie in a throwaway role as a cop, but
for suppositions sake, imagine if he played Parker?
Certainly not a bigger star than Statham but a better actor,
and he kind of fits the role better. He probably
couldn't pull of that knife fight in the hotel room like
Statham could, which was awesome by the way, but then the
movie wouldn't need that because it's no longer a Jason
Statham movie. We can keep Jason in the movie, just make
him a bad guy. I know I would think twice before messing
with a pair of tiny bad guys that looked like Chiklis and
Statham.
All I'm saying is that 'Parker' isn't a bad movie, but it is a
Statham movie, and we've kind of seen this before a few
times. Or more.
