Robber with morals Parker (Jason Statham), shot and left for dead, wants only to recover his share and teach people how to behave properly. Having tracked those who owe him money down to Palm Beach, he poses as a Texan businessman in order to get a real estate agent to help him identify the property they may be using as a base. He may not have reckoned with the real estate agent having her own agenda, and the crew who owe him money having high powered connections...
This crime caper movie starts off firing on all cylinders. It opens as a robbery gets under way and then stays in full action mode for the best part of an hour. Then Parker arrives in Palm Beach, encounters Jennifer Lopez's hard-up real estate agent, and something really weird happens. You can feel that, at this point, the film badly wants to become a comedy. It never does - it remains a violent, hard boiled crime thriller throughout, but there is always this strong urge for it to be something lighter and frothier whenever Lopez is around.
For all that, I enjoyed it especially given that it didn't always do what I expected it to. It was, as always, a mistake to get Statham to do accents - as well as a generic American accent, he is saddled with having to have a go at a Texan accent, and accordingly he wanders around all over the place - US tough guy, Texas, and (mostly) London, sometimes all in the same sentence. The action sequences are well staged (Statham exhibits powers of recovery on a par with Wolverine's healing factor), with one especially satisfying moment during a fight which produced an audible, "Oof!" from the cinema audience. Good fun, if a little odd in places.
This crime caper movie starts off firing on all cylinders. It opens as a robbery gets under way and then stays in full action mode for the best part of an hour. Then Parker arrives in Palm Beach, encounters Jennifer Lopez's hard-up real estate agent, and something really weird happens. You can feel that, at this point, the film badly wants to become a comedy. It never does - it remains a violent, hard boiled crime thriller throughout, but there is always this strong urge for it to be something lighter and frothier whenever Lopez is around.
For all that, I enjoyed it especially given that it didn't always do what I expected it to. It was, as always, a mistake to get Statham to do accents - as well as a generic American accent, he is saddled with having to have a go at a Texan accent, and accordingly he wanders around all over the place - US tough guy, Texas, and (mostly) London, sometimes all in the same sentence. The action sequences are well staged (Statham exhibits powers of recovery on a par with Wolverine's healing factor), with one especially satisfying moment during a fight which produced an audible, "Oof!" from the cinema audience. Good fun, if a little odd in places.