Director: Taylor Hackford
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 3/10
There is a place for mindless action flicks. They do not push the envelope or move the art of filmmaking forward, but they can be fun — something to put on in the background while you stuff your face with popcorn. Just because something isn’t “good” doesn’t mean it can’t be “fun.” But I want to make sure I’m completely clear: Parker is neither good nor fun.
I didn’t go in expecting a marvel of cinema, but I also didn’t expect something so sloppy and disjointed. Particularly from Taylor Hackford, the director who brought us (among other things) Ray and The Devil’s Advocate. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear to you that this was the work of a first time director — and not a good one, either.
The movie begins with an elaborate five-man heist set in the middle of a state fair and led by the titular Parker (Jason Statham). In typical Statham-movie style, our hero is a tough-guy criminal with a good heart. So much so that when a hostage has a panic attack in the middle of the robbery, Parker puts the heist on pause to help calm him down.
The robbery is successful, and Parker’s fellow thieves offer him the opportunity to join them on a subsequent, bigger, heist. Parker refuses, so they shoot him and leave him for dead. Spoiler Alert, he survives. Though Parker’s friend (Nick Nolte) suggests he quit while he’s ahead, Parker wants vengeance and his cut of the State Fair job. So he follows the gang (helmed by Michael Chiklis) to Palm Beach, Florida.
It is at this point that the movie completely switches gears:
Forty minutes in, we meet Leslie Rogers (Jennifer Lopez), who completely overshadows Parker to become the main character of the movie (we certainly spend more time with her than with Parker, and she has more dialogue.) What’s even more bizarre is the clumsy, silly feel that the movie suddenly adopts. Instead of following Parker’s continued efforts to elude the assassins that are hunting him down or find his former partners, the audience is given scenes of Jenifer Lopez bickering with her mother and fighting off the unwanted attention of a local cop. It all feels like something out of a rom com rather than a heist flick.
The romance between Parker and Leslie never really worked for me, either. It was established early in the movie that Parker already has a girlfriend whom he is completely devoted to. So I don’t understand how there was ever supposed to be any romantic tension between him and another woman. Further, neither character is really given any reason to be interested in the other except for a couple clumsy bits of dialogue about how Leslie needs money and one awkward shot of her staring as his butt.
This is truly a disaster of a film. The usually great Michael Chiklis looks terrible when given such ridiculous, clichéd dialogue. There are long sections of dialogue where the audio clearly doesn’t match the video and abrupt uses of stock footage that don’t match.
That said, there’s a few chuckle moments over the course of the 118 minutes, and Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez remain likable despite the miserable film they’re acting in. If you absolutely love action flicks no matter how cheesy or cliched or terrible they are, maybe you’ll like this one. Otherwise, I would recommend avoiding it.
