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60Fifty years after he first appeared, Donald E. Westlake’s antihero may have found his perfect avatar. Like Parker’s robberies, it isn’t entirely successful, but Statham and Lopez make enticingly mismatched partners in crime.
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58Sometimes in life, simple pleasures can be rewarding, and that’s certainly the case here. Parker is not a particularly innovative film, but it’s no less effective for the blemish.
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Feb 9, 201360He might have lost his edge, but Parker hasn’t mellowed in his old age. A sunny, silly, violent revenger that puts Statham in good company.
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25The best we get here are modest action diversions.
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20I have never doodled during a movie before in my life, but holy hell, Parker's two-hour running time takes a lifetime. Plenty of time for mental doodling, too.
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38Despite an epic fight or two, Parker robs us of the revenge, the suspense of the hunt, of Parker's methodical way of tracking down those who betrayed him, one by one.
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25For an old-fashioned crime thriller, you need real pros. Mr. Statham is to acting what Taco Bell is to nutrition.
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50Parker the movie, like the man, delivers exactly as promised.
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Jan 26, 201375The movie is neatly directed by Taylor Hackford, who keeps it moving quickly without descending into a blur of cut-cut-cut edits.
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Jan 26, 201338The best things about Parker are the two lead actors. Although working with material that is lackluster even by his standards, Statham manages to demonstrate a commanding screen presence that cannot be dismissed.
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20The smidgen of dramatic color offered by Jennifer Lopez, as a divorced real-estate broker drawn into Parker's payback scheme, is offset by her character's shocking naïveté, shedding her clothes on command (as if she still couldn't hide a wire somewhere) and falling unconvincingly for Statham's featureless cipher.
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25This Parker spits in our collective eye. Don't blame us for spitting back.
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63The action scenes are crisply directed, brutal, and invigorating.
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25This newest film is an undercooked potboiler, one so tastelessly bland and visually indistinguishable that you wonder if anyone associated with the project realized what makes cheapo crime fiction so fun to consume.
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42The movie is a morals-free procession of bang bang bang! and blood blood blood!, and men slamming each other with blunt objects and slicing each other with blades.
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60It's an uneven but fairly enjoyable ride, one that benefits from Statham's cool, capable presence.
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Jan 25, 201358Though Parker starts off fairly strong, the action gets more predictable as it meanders toward its conclusion.
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75Even the people who griped about Tom Cruise being cast as the towering Jack Reacher will have to admit Statham fits nicely in Parker's shoes.
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50Parker is watchable chiefly for Statham, who exudes effortless cool and excels in hand-to-hand combat, as well as demonstrating his skill at wielding some very unlikely weapons.
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Jan 24, 201363The tight-lipped, give-no-quarter Statham is impeccable as the pitiless yet honourable Parker (though fans of the books will no doubt quibble, especially over the British accent). On the other hand, Lopez, that pleasant sex pot, hasn't a hope of producing the tragic desperation of her down-on-her-luck character.
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40If you go in knowing what you're getting, you should come out relatively satisfied. Our hero vigorously beats up a parade of bad guys. Lots of bullets fly. There are a couple of decently plotted thefts. And to tell the truth, Statham's Southern accent is nearly worth the price of admission itself.
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70Crisp and efficient, with the occasional clunky moments, Parker also shows off Jennifer Lopez (literally) to good effect, while mostly squandering the rest of its first-rate cast.
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70The picture is far from great, but it's a serviceable B-movie with some A-list talent on a slumming expedition.
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60If you're going to saturate a film with so much violence, at least it's nice to see an action hero - or antihero - actually feeling the pain.
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63Taylor Hackford directs crisply, unpretentiously. Patti LuPone goes Latina, playing Lopez's soap opera-addicted mom, and Bobby Cannavale is a Palm Beach cop with an eye for Leslie. The action is fast and furious.
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70Parker...is not a great movie....But Parker is nonetheless great fun. It is part of a welcome trend, or counter-trend, in action filmmaking, an effort to strip away the apocalyptic bloat and digital fakery that have overtaken the genre and return to its pulpy, nasty, mechanical roots.
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30The essence of this grindingly violent movie can be summed up by what Parker says of his handgun to a terrified clerk at a check-cashing service: "It's small, but it hurts."
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38Tonally, Parker's not so much broad or inclusive as weirdly schizophrenic, vacillating between flat comedy and spiked savagery, the product of a painfully slapdash script that also includes such laughable incidental dialogue as "pizza-I love that sh.t" and "beers and jewels, baby."
User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 25
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Mixed: 8 out of 25
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Negative: 5 out of 25
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Just your regular Statham movie. Nothing new, just all the same as before, no point lots of violence.
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7