Movie Review: Parker (2013)

Oi, even loike this, they still call me 'andsome Rob.

I thought Parker could work, I really did. It's essentially the same thing as The Transporter, and more of the The Transporter couldn't possibly be a bad thing. Just switch up some character names, surround our hero with some "new" characters, new locales, and new circumstances to put a hurting on ne'er-do-wells, and you're well on your way to a successful action film. Only a dab of panache is necessary. I waited throughout the opening for something, anything, to let me know that a bit of thought, beyond rudimentary craftsmanship, had gone into Parker. I had to wait until much later to find that satisfaction, and it was a fleeting satisfaction at that. As in most tepid action movies, the plot works fine for what it is: Statham, as the titular square-dealing thief, finds himself left for dead by his crew following a particularly sloppy heist, and the rest of Parker's runtime is spent on his vengeful reacquisition of the money (that is, when it isn't spent on Jennifer Lopez's boring real estate job). The problem, then, isn't in the kind of story Parker tells, but in its execution of that story. Statham's character is guided by an ethical code strikingly similar to the "rules" laid out by his Frank Martin in the three Transporters, but unlike in those films, Parker's code comes to us piecemeal and is simply superimposed upon the action. In other words, this code gives him a few neat things to say while doing his job, but doesn't really tell us anything significant about him and serves no purpose in the overall goings-on. Furthermore, the introduction of J-Lo's debt-ridden real estate agent only muddies the waters, effectively derailing Parker's (already fledgling) narrative momentum to shoehorn in an uncooked love triangle that does nothing to raise the stakes. Sure, he needs to use her knowledge of the affluent Miami neighborhoods to find the hoods he's looking for, but the scenes between them are absolutely awkward and their relationship is never satisfactorily worked out, even in a totally oblique or open-ended fashion. Statham gets in a few choice lines, as well as some beautifully absurd disguises, but nothing truly memorable. And unlike most entries in the Statham catalogue, even the beatdowns are letdowns in Parker.