'Parker' Trailer Lowers My Skepticism

I showed my discontent with the teaser poster for Parker earlier this week and thought it looked barebones, corny, and amateurish.  I have to say the first trailer has swayed me slightly, but still hasn’t changed my mind on the decision to include Jennifer Lopez in the cast.  And apparently I forgot to mention that the film is based on a book but that doesn’t matter to me.  Parker still looks like your run of the mill revenge film.  Take a look for yourself after the jump.

If you put Statham in it he will kick ass.  That’s the creed of the film industry and this one looks like it stands by that.  I went into watching this trailer with one hand over my eye, scared to see if the film would look good.  I was pleased to see that it appears action packed, and I guess I have something to watch this January.  Lopez looks like she’s been miscast as a real estate agent and is out of place with the rest of the cast.  I hate to say it, but I’m open to seeing her performance. 

Something that didn’t hit me until now is that the film looks like any other Statham film released in the years prior.  I’m waiting for someone to splice together every Statham action film trailer thus far.  The challenge is to find out which scene is which film.  I’m okay with that, though.  I wouldn’t say that I’ll be first in line to see this, but I might be there the Wednesday after it comes out.  Parker is set to release this January 25^th.  

Source: Machinima

Comments

[D. Bethel]

What's maybe important to note is that the character of Parker is based the Donald Westlake's (aka "Richard Stark") Parker series. While they are relatively unknown and, as you say, "doesn't matter," it is still important because Parker is not new to cinemas at all. The first book in the series, The Hunter, has been adapted for screen twice already; first in the 1968 Lee Marvin vehicle, "Point Blank" and again in the late '90s as "Payback." Not for nothing, in the last five years, Darwyn Cooke, creator of DC's "New Frontier" mini-series, has been adapting the Parker books as graphic novels and are great, hard-boiled stuff in their own right. So, there is a cinematic lineage to these books, and even if you haven't read them it is important to note that they are not some forgotten franchise drudged up from history. Quite the opposite, in fact; the books seem to have acquired a new state of relevance in the last 20 years.