Something very strange happened while watching the trailer for director Taylor Hackford’s PARKER; I suddenly had the desire to see a Jason Statham movie in the theater. Sounds crazy, right? To be fair, Statham is great to watch, but it’s a rarity anymore that I’d rush out to see him on the big screen. However, with PARKER, you have a bang-up cast and a well-versed director spearheading the project, which is based on the Parker series of novels by Donald E. Westlake.
Take a look:
The character of Parker has been adapted in numerous forms on the big screen already with Lee Marvin’s POINT BLANK and Mel Gibson’s PAYBACK (both based on the novel The Hunter), each of which changed the name of Parker to something else. PARKER is based on Westlake’s novel Flashfire, but is keeping the original name. Overall, I’m impressed. It’s got a lot of the usual Statham action goodies, but with the source material and stellar cast, I think this has the potential to give Statham a theatrical hit.
Here’s the synopsis:
Parker (Jason Statham) is a professional thief who lives by a personal code of ethics: Don’t steal from people who can’t afford it and don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it. But on his latest heist, his crew double crosses him, steals his stash, and leaves him for dead. Determined to make sure they regret it, Parker tracks them to PalmBeach, playground of the rich and famous, where the crew is planning their biggest heist ever. Donning the disguise of a rich Texan, Parker takes on an unlikely partner, Leslie (Jennifer Lopez), a savvy insider, who’s short on cash, but big on looks, smarts and ambition. Together, they devise a plan to hijack the score, take everyone down and get away clean.
PARKER hits theaters on January 25, 2013.