Jason Statham: Tougher Than Ever in Parker

An action film also starring Jennifer Lopez which is worth the detour, to be seen again this evening on television.

The Stath' will be in competition with itself on this Thursday evening. While TMC will offer An angry man (Guy Ritchie, 2021), W9 will focus on Parker (Taylor Hackford, 2013). Difficult to choose for action fans: these two films are successful in their genre.

After Lee Marvin or Mel Gibson, Jason Statham in 2013 played the hero created by Donald Westlake. With Parker, this author invented one of the best characters in noir novels. The thief who lives only by a code of honor, and never gives up fighting to enforce it, has been interpreted many times in the cinema. Among others by Lee Marvin (The point of no return), Jim Brown (Crime is our business) And Mel Gibson (Payback). The next one to do it will be Robert Downey Jr.and before him, there was therefore Jason Statham. The actor, who specializes in tough-guy characters, Carriers has Blitz is the only one to have played him in a film simply titled Parker.

It's the ghost Taylor Hackford (Officer & Gentleman, Against All Odds) who produced this new adaptation of Westlakewith the intention as he declared to Variety not to make it a B series: “ I don't want to be stuck in genre cinema. This is precisely what I love about such starting material: there is something to move away from the station novel and towards a great film altogether. “.

Did he succeed in his bet? Here is what Frédéric Foubert wrote in his review of the film for First :

“Imagined by writer Donald E. Westlake (aka Richard Stark), the character of Parker has taken on, over the course of the film adaptations, the traits of people like Lee Marvin (The point of no returnJohn Boorman, 1968), Robert Duvall (Failure to organizeJohn Flynn, 1973) or Mel Gibson (Payback, Brian Helgeland, 1999). Today he looks like Jason Statham in this little “badassery” Saturday evening by Taylor Hackford.

The director of Ray packs it with his usual lack of personality, ultimately looking less towards Boorman & Co than towards Soderbergh period Out of reach – Jennifer Lopez also finds here a Karen Sisco-style role, that of a sexy and desalted girl who has a crush on bad boys. It's perfect, the result is cool and violent as it should be, the bad guys (faces escaped from The Shield And The Wire) are well cast, but we won't shock anyone by pointing out that at no point does the film come close to matching its predecessors. Would each era have the Parker it deserves?

Note that another filmmaker had attempted a different approach to Parker's character: in 1966, Jean-Luc Godardwas based on Nothing in the trunk for his Made in USA. However, he had not purchased the rights to this novel. Westlake sued him and the film was therefore banned from release in certain countries until mid-2009, a few months after the writer's death. In this version, Parker was a woman, played by Anna Anna Karina.