Parker Review

1st Mar 2013

If you’re a regular listener to our Filmwerk podcasts then you may have heard me waxing lyrical on our Jason Statham retrospective about just how much I love the big man (available for your listening pleasure here (HEALTH WARNING – it’s best to keep the volume down, I tend to squeal whenever we talk about his many physical attributes). Naturally my deep and abiding love for all things Stath made me the perfect candidate to review his latest release Parker.

Due to hit cinema screens in the UK on 8^th March, although Parker is another action vehicle allowing Statham to show off his impressive martial arts skills (and smoking hot body), there’s a little more to it this time. His character, the eponymous Parker, is Statham’s typical criminal with a moral code. He doesn’t steal from the poor or hurt the innocent, but when one job goes south and he refuses to undertake another job with the same mob-connected team, they beat him to a bloody, bullet-ridden pulp and leave him for dead by the side of the road. Unsurprisingly the Stath survives and vows revenge…at any cost.

The film is based on the novel Flash Fire by Richard Stark which is part of a series of books on the character Parker and you can well imagine that this film is envisaged to be the start of a franchise. Perhaps as a lower-budget answer to Jack Reacher. Under normal circumstances I would have said that that kind of pre-knowledge would have robbed the film of any real jeopardy. However, that could not be further from the truth as The Stath takes a pounding to rival anything I’ve ever seen before. Not short of gore either, the camera doesn’t shy away in one scene where Parker takes a knife through the hand, nor does the action let up as he’s left hanging from a balcony fighting for his life with the knife still though his hand. There was one particular scene where I really did think “Christ, is he really going to die?!” Not often you have that reaction to a Statham vehicle.

I must actually give props to The Stath in this film, it’s possibly the best acting I’ve ever seen him do. It may be an action film at its core, but the dialogue outweighs the fight scenes and it’s nice to see him stretch himself a bit. There’s minimal growling; sure he does a really dodgy Texan accent for a good 20 minutes (for God’s sake either get the man a dialect coach or stop asking him to do accents!), but he also does some intentional comedy as the film had quite a few humorous beats. Although, it has to be said that the biggest laugh was Jennifer Lopez’s “huh?” reaction to his accent.

Now, if you’ve listened to the podcast, you’ll know that I was very keen on The Stath breaking out of the action genre and doing a bit more comedy, because I honestly do believe that he has excellent comedic timing. My glasses may be rose-tinted when it comes to this man, but I feel somewhat vindicated now that he’s demonstrated even in a small way that he can be intentionally funny.

Back to J-Lo, I can honestly say that this is the first film I’ve seen her in where I enjoyed her performance. I’m not even keen on her turn in Out of Sight, despite her chemistry with Clooney I never found her an especially likeable or engaging screen presence. There is something very real about her performance here; she bought a desperation to the character which made her immediately sympathetic. She plays a divorcee, pushing 40, stuck living back at home with her mother whilst being forced to pay off her ex-husband’s debts by working unsuccessfully as an estate agent in Florida’s exclusive Palm Beach. Sure she’s still stunning and as one completely unnecessary stripping scene reveals (The Stath is <ahem> checking for a wire), still has a smoking hot body, but she’s also emotionally raw and desperate to change her circumstances. What was also interesting about her character was her moral ambiguity. She helps Parker to seek revenge on the people who wronged him, not because she luuurrrves him (although she does repeatedly try to shag him…smart girl) or because she thinks they deserve it, but because she can’t go on living her life the way she has. She understands right and wrong, but is in a place where she’s willing to turn a blind eye to the less salubrious aspects of Parker’s personality in order to change her circumstances. Refreshingly, she wasn’t a damsel in distress and actively saves herself at one point by shooting a bad-guy. Sure she has a bit of a cry about it, but after the initial shock it doesn’t seem to bother her that much….actually…wait….is that moral ambiguity or being a sociopath?

I want to briefly mention Michael Chiklis, who although I think generally is brilliant (see The Shield) doesn’t really have much to do here. He plays the antagonist and apart from the truly terrifying clown make-up he wears at the beginning of the film doesn’t do much except order other people about. He’s just a standard issue bad guy, which is a waste of a good actor if you ask me. But hey, everyone’s got bills to pay right?

Finally, I think what elevates this film above bog-standard action movie is the direction. I don’t think anyone can really fault Taylor Hackford’s pedigree and it’s clear by everything from the costumes and sets, to the pacing through to the characterization, that the director really cares about making this film the best it can be. Everything is deliberate and nothing feels rushed. Of course, the flip side of that is that the opening scene drags somewhat and there are things I could have lived without…and I still don’t understand the point of Nick Nolte’s character and Parker’s girlfriend Claire, other than as a set up for a sequel.

That being said, it was a good enough film to warrant a cinema trip, you won’t come out of it as breathless as you did from Crank, or as impressed as you were from Snatch or as surprised as you were from The Transporter, but it’s certainly nice to see The Stath stretch himself and prove that actually he can act.