Review - Parker (2013)

Starring Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez and Michael Chiklis.
Directed by Taylor Hackford.

Based on the Parker novels - Parker is your typical Jason Statham action movie, this time we add the sexy Jennifer Lopez to the mix. The movie follows Parker (Jason Statham), who is double crossed by his crew after a successful heist. He seeks his revenge after being left for dead and gets Leslie Rodgers (Jennifer Lopez), a real estate agent, caught up in his endeavours.

The movie opens up with a heist at a circus which I thought was well executed; not to mention Jason Statham's wig looked amazing. Statham was his usual bad-ass self for most parts, while everyone else pretty much sucked. Parker suffered from poor character development. Like seriously, what do we even know about the main character Parker? Nothing really, we just witness him getting battered the entire film. Jennifer Lopez's character was the only one that was even remotely developed and it's a pity that she was so poorly portrayed by Lopez. Jennifer was hot but this is was a serious case of mis-casting. She was so forced and out of place. The guys who double-crossed Parker (led by Michael Chiklis) is another story. Could these antagonists be any more lame and implausible? Shit.

Sadly I think this movie went downhill from the first heist, instead of getting better. The story is your typical double-crossing heist. We see some action in the first half and then in the second half, the movie starts to focus more on Jennifer Lopez's character. This kinda threw me off; it's not like her character even made that big of an impact towards the plot. As a result, Parker slows down mid-way and I got bored - made worse by the uninteresting dialogue between the characters. The dialogue was so poor that I felt like they were making up their words as the movie went along. This is a prime example of an action movie gone terribly soft. You know in most heist films you see detailed planning of the heists which gets the audience all pumped up; but instead this movie shifts focus on a struggling real estate agent for too long, instead of trying to build the right tension. Therefore the ending was flat and Parker is pretty much one of the worst heist films I've seen.

Parker fails as an action movie and everyone except Statham sucked. Otherwise from the start, the best part of this film was when Jennifer Lopez was half-naked. A forgettable thriller.

Rating: 3/10



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