K-SCORE: 23
Director: Taylor Hackford
Writer: John J. McLaughlin
Starring: Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“a cautionary tale on what happens when you force Jason Statham to do too much accent work”
Jason Statham - codename (real name?) Parker is on a heist or a quest for revenge or maybe both. Like many of this great actor's terrible films, its badness will entertain. Jennifer Lopez costars as a… real estate agent. She’s also not in the first hour of the film and that’s the stronger of the two halves, so I guess that doesn’t speak highly of her role and what she brings to the piece of cinema.
The best I can say about Parker, both film and character, is that he’s principled. Yet he, like everyone else in the film, is a bumbling buffoon when it comes to scheming. At no point did he need to involve J-Lo in his crimes and at no point should she have been willing to consort with an established thief and killer. I suppose that makes this film the tale of how a pushy morally questionable realtor living in Palm Beach can make a ton of cash despite only getting in the way of the world’s simplest jewel heist. No, no. It’s the story of how four easily murderable criminal morons are still easily murderable after they’ve dumped millions of dollars of diamonds on their kitchen table and taken a nosy Hispanic woman hostage. Or maybe it’s just a cautionary tale on what happens when you force Jason Statham to do too much accent work.
There’s also one of the worst kill-or-be-killed one-liners I’ve ever heard. Die Hard has, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.” Parker has, “You were supposed to torch the hay bales behind the livestock pavilion!” [gunshot to the face]