With Arnold and Stallone coming back into the fold again,
one has to wonder how the star power and celebrity of the British brute Jason
Statham will reflect off of the obvious clout of his forerunners. When the
original progenitors of 80’s “Badass cinema” fell by the wayside in the late
90s a bulky, dude-with-a-gun shaped void was left in their place. Enter Statham:
a mumbley character actor, drafted in from Guy Ritchie’s school of English rapscallions.
Unfortunately, Statham left behind his whit, his humor and his subtly when he
came over. After all, us American’s don’t need our action heroes to have any
personality as long as they can load a firearm and jump away from explosions,
all while looking casually stoic as they do it.
To be fair, I don’t hate the
entirety of Statham’s post-Ritchy career. The first “Transporter” was big and gaudy
but it was unassuming and it knew exactly what it needed to be. Likewise, the “Crank”
movies amped up the model of the
got-to-get-to-the-thing-before-the-thing-happens genre in an aggressively satisfying
way. But with those movies the fading distance, American filmmakers were left a
balding Brit with no home and nothing to do; so we slapped a gun in his hand,
put him in a suit and shoved him in to a slew of would-be rejected Nick Cage
projects—sometimes at the rate of two or three a year.
In this film Statham plays
“Parker”, a professional thief who is double crossed by his crew when a robbery
at a county fair goes wrong. After they shoot him and leave for dead on side of
the road, they head to Palm Beach in hopes to pull off a multi-million dollar
jewelry heist. When Parker recovers, he follows
them undercover and meets a disgruntled and underpaid real estate agent named
Leslie Rodgers (Jennifer Lopez), who is hired to show him around the rich neighborhoods
in which his enemies plan on targeting. Once she finds out Parker’s true
identity, Leslie is unable to keep herself out of all of the excitement and
lends her realty skills to aid in his revenge.
Certainly Statham has been in
worse films, but that doesn’t change the fact that nothing here really works that
well and the positives don’t outweigh its inherent weaknesses. It tries to
satisfy a kind of spy-gone-rogue, man-in-disguise thing, but too much of Statham’s
persona is embodied in his reckless, thuggish physicality. Simultaneously, It
wants to be a tough exercise in manly ultra-violence (which admittedly contains
the movie’s best moments) , but the scarce action is bridged by long stretches of
badly edited and poorly plotted, meandering nothingness, and these moments are too
sluggish to maintain the audience’s adrenaline.
All of the characters, as they
are presented on the page, are simple at best but poor Jennifer Lopez gets the
brunt of it. The movie tries to tease a possible desire and sexual tension
between the two leads but that’s undercut by the fact that we know Parker
already has a mostly off-screen girlfriend.
Since there isn’t a chance for romance and Lopez never becomes a strong
fighter herself, she is left with a thankless damsel-in-distress role that
leaves her character bland at best and whiny and superfluous at worse. I’m used
to seeing this kind of thing from Katherine Heigl, but a screen presence like
J-Lo (despite her numerous cinematic sins) deserves better in an action
movie. If you don’t believe me, go back
and rent the underrated “Out of Site”. In fact, go back and watch any movie
besides “Parker”.
A bad action movie can be
forgiven for its cheese and camp as long it can keep people entertained and
stimulated, as classic, low-calorie films such as “Cobra” and “Commando” have
proven. However, “Parker” isn’t dumb enough to be quaint, and it isn’t loud
enough to be memorable, so instead it just settles for boring, which is the one
thing a Jason Statham movie isn’t allowed to be.
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2013
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