Parker

The eponymous hero of Parker made an auspicious Hollywood debut in John Boorman's classic existential thriller Point Blank. A professional thief with a code of honour ("I only steal from people who can afford it"), he seems a poor judge of character as, once again, he is double-crossed by his colleagues and left for dead in this new outing based on the cycle of novels by Richard Stark.

With Jason Statham instead of Lee Marvin in the lead role, and journeyman director Taylor Hackford at the helm, this is inevitably a more workaday affair than the earlier film, but it has some decent procedural sequences and uses its Palm Beach locations effectively. Statham, in a role that seems calculated to push him into the big league, is unsurprisingly effective in the action scenes but lacks the charisma necessary to round out his character. Jennifer Lopez, as his unlikely accomplice, displays a charm not seen since her transformation into J-Lo. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck] 

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