The prolific crime novelist Donald E Westlake used the pseudonym Richard Stark to write well over 20 novels about the larcenous, lethal but oddly principled professional thief known simply as Parker. He has been impersonated on screen several times, but always with the name changed, most famously by Lee Marvin in John Boorman's Point Blank, where he was called Walker. Now he's at last on screen as Parker and played by the endearing British screen thug and former international diving star Jason Statham, a role that fits him like a knuckleduster. The film kicks off with a (cinematically and criminally well-staged) heist at the annual Ohio state fair (held at James Thurber's home town of Columbus) that leads to Parker's crooked partners leaving him for dead. Taking the same route travelled by Elmore Leonard's colourful crooks, Parker pursues them to Florida where they're planning a big-scale jewel robbery in plush Palm Beach. Much mayhem follows, but Statham, who moves with athletic grace, can take it as uncomplainingly as Mike Tyson's punchbag, and hand it out as relentlessly as Jean-Claude Van Damme. He takes his violent revenge plus large amounts of swag, much of which he distributes to the deserving poor. Jennifer Lopez is endearing as a Latino realtor with social ambitions and a big heart; Taylor Hackford (whose name, combining hack and Ford, rightly suggests a film-maker who's part journeyman, part auteur) turns in a slick job of direction.
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