PARKER: Take Off Your Dress

Parker (2013) – Directed by Taylor Hackford – Starring Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce, Clifton Collins Jr., Bobby Cannavale, Patti Lupone, Carlos Carrasco, Michah Hauptman, Emma Booth, Daniel Bernhardt, and Nick Nolte.

Fifteen years.

I was not expecting the number to be that high, but it’s been fifteen years since Jennifer Lopez appeared in Out of Sight. Fifteen years since she delivered the best performance of her career and here she is, starring in another crime thriller, starring as another good woman who gets tangled up with another bad man. Fifteen years ago, she starred opposite George Clooney, under the direction of Steven Soderbergh, and in an Elmore Leonard story, and while I believe you have to look at every film on its own, let’s be clear about a few things.

Jason Statham, who I like, is not nearly the actor George Clooney is.

Taylor Hackford, who I like, is not nearly the director Steven Soderbergh is.

Donald Westlake, who I like, is not nearly the novelist Elmore Leonard is.

And PARKER is not nearly the film Out of Sight is.

Yet despite all of that, here sits Jennifer Lopez, in a movie that is, in no way, the equal of Out of Sight, delivering a performance nearly as good. It begs the question – is there any actress in the last 20 years who’s done a poorer job maxing out their talent than Jennifer Lopez?

I absolutely loathe when people tell others how to live their life. I find it noxious when sportswriters, who are the biggest criminals in this regard, tell athletes or coaches that they should retire, that they’re somehow spoiling their legacy by continuing to play, so I am not here to tell Jennifer Lopez she has lived the last 15 years of her life incorrectly. She’s a woman with many talents and many interests and only she can determine whether those choices were the right ones, whether the artistic and business decisions she’s made have brought her happiness. What I am saying – and I’m saying this from a purely selfish point of view of a guy who’s interested in her acting far more than her music or clothing or talent judging – is that she has great talent as an actress, far greater talent than is revealed in her filmography.

Since Out of Sight, she’s been run through the Hollywood Mill: where men who show that particular mix of acting ability and box office potential get tossed in action movie after action movie, women get tossed into romance flicks and romantic comedies and thrillers/horror movies. Lopez followed up Out of Sight with a unique choice (The Cell), but since then, it’s been largely romantic-driven material. There’s been a few box office hits sprinkled in, but it’s been rare that she’s delivered a performance that tapped into the talent that was so clearly on display in Soderbergh’s film.

Which brings me to PARKER, a film that either has no idea what it wants to be or no ability to deliver it. It’s a movie that isn’t awful, but it’s also a movie that has no consistent or coherent vision, a movie that is completely lacking in the style it so desperately needs if it wants to be a crime film, and the energy it needs if it wants to be an action film.

Folded into this inconsistent mess, however, is a really great performance from Lopez. She plays Leslie Rogers, a woman who’s forced to start her life over as she nears 40 years of age. Her ex-husband turned out to be a better cover than book, and she’s been forced to move back in with her mom (Patti Lupone) and work low on the food chain at a high-end real estate agency. Cash is tight (the car she’s leasing and the clothes she’s wearing are above her current pay grade, and she has to help pay off her ex’s bankruptcy), and she’s grown desperate. She steals Parker (who’s pretending to be a rich Texan to scout real estate and find his enemies) from a co-worker and while she complains about the men who hit on her while she’s showing them property (and having to allow some of their advances so as not to lose them as clients) she throws herself at the rich Texan.

It’s pathetic and desperate and Lopez delivers it all beautifully. There’s a real sadness to Leslie, and I believe that she sees first the rich Texan and then the British criminal as a way out of her predicament. It makes me wonder how the last fifteen years would have been different for Lopez if her opportunities and choices had done a better job tapping into her talent instead of relying on her star power.

Of all the things wrong with PARKER, Jennifer Lopez is not among them.

It’s not a film’s fault if it’s marketed poorly, and the movie PARKER purports to be in its commercials is not the film you’ll find when you watch it. This is not a sexy crime thriller. In the commercials there’s lots of sexual allusions: about how “it’s not the size of the gun, but how you use it,” about a sexy shower scene, and about Lopez’s body.

But there’s nothing sexy about PARKER. Sure, there’s good looking leads here, but the film isn’t sexy. The line about the size of the gun? It’s not said from Parker (Statham) to Leslie, but Parker to a guy he’s just shot who claimed “mine’s bigger.” The sexy shower scene? It’s not between Parker and Leslie, but Parker and his actual girlfriend, Claire (Emma Booth), and there’s nothing sexy about it. And Lopez’s body? When Parker tells her to “take off your dress,” the camera puts Lopez’s entire body in the frame, but there isn’t anything sexy about the scene. Parker says he needs to know if she’s wearing a wire, and he really means he wants to know if she’s wearing a wire. There’s no tension, sexual or otherwise.

I’m left struggling about what this movie is supposed to be. Is this supposed to be the movie that takes Statham into the A list of action stars? Is it supposed to be the movie that shows us he’s every bit the actor as he is the puncher and kicker? Or is it supposed to be just another Statham film dressed up with a few stars to try and get bigger box office cake?

Whatever it’s trying to be, it isn’t it.

As I mentioned, I try and judge every film on its own merits, yet there’s so much about PARKER that begs you think of other, better options that it’s hard to escape.

When you do a crime movie that attempts to take a “good guy bad guy” and use him as the protagonist, you’re stepping on Elmore Leonard’s turf, and Westlake isn’t Leonard. What this film desperately needs is some Elmore Leonard characters (or, since the movie is set in Florida, some Carl Hiassen characters) to surround the driven, focused Parker. I like Jason Statham and I think he’s a good enough actor to escape the action genre, and I like the performance he gives here as the principled criminal, but if you’re going to have that kind of main character, you need to give the audience something somewhere else to balance that off – make it stylistic or surround him with personable characters. Other than Lopez’s Leslie, PARKER completely fails in this regard.

The issues with the lack of visual style in the movie has to fall to Taylor Hackford. He’s a fine director and gets fine performances from all of the actors in the film, but PARKER has all the visual style of a Lifetime Movie of the Week. The camera is largely flat and static. The action scenes have no immediacy to them, and except for one moment where Parker uses a piece of a toilet to crack his opponent in the face, the violence hits with the impact of getting punched in the face by a man with no arms. The story is slow and dull, and it begs for a film that wins you over with visual style. The few shots we see of Parker with his shirt off shows us that he’s got nasty scars all over his body, and the scenes beg out for the camera to linger. When Claire looks and them or runs her hands over them, the camera needs to linger there, too. Hackford could play with perspective, giving us the establishing shots intercut with extreme close-ups of the scars, but he doesn’t. It’s just, “Here’s a shot of Statham without his shirt in a shower and he’s got scars, what’s next?”

My least favorite part of the film is the ending. After Parker gets his revenge and he and Leslie are sitting in a car with the jewels that Michael Chiklis’ crew stole, he tells her how it’s going to go down, laying out how she’ll hide the jewels, how he’ll send someone to get them, that he’ll fence them, how the cut works, etc. Then he gets out of the car and she pulls away.

That happens, and if the movie had ended right there, it would have been the best part of the movie. It would have been a rare moment of style bringing out the best in both characters. But even though we’ve just spent the entire film learning that Parker is a man of his word, that “when I say I’m going to do something, I do it,” the film then has to show us how it all plays out. For some reason, even though you completely trust that he’s going to do what he says, the film has to show us Leslie getting a package full of money. It’s dumb and unnecessary and has the feel of either filmmakers who don’t know what they’re doing or producers who’ve demanded its inclusion because of what a dumb focus group has told them.

The end result is a film that isn’t bad but is unsatisfactory, a film that needs style but lacks it, a film that needs characters but lacks them, and a film that never equals the sum of its parts.

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My latest collection of reviews is now available for purchase. I cover every Marvel comic movie, from The Avengers to Howard the Duck, from Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk to Ed Norton’s Hulk to Eric Bana’s Hulk to Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk. All the big budget movies are reviewed, all the 1970s made-for-TV movies are reviewed, and all the straight-to-video animated titles, too. Thanks for checking it out!

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER: An Invisible Kick in the Nuts

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) – Directed by Tim Story – Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Andre Braugher, Kerry Washington, Doug Jones, Laurence Fishburne, Beau Garrett, Brian Posehn, and Stan Lee.

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is not the worst superhero movie ever made, but it may very well be the dumbest.

The sinkhole that drags this film down is the Invisible Woman, but it would be terribly unfair to lay the blame solely at the feet of Jessica Alba. Don’t misunderstand me, she’s absolutely horrific in much of this film, but neither the script nor the director have put Alba in a position to succeed. RISE’s conception of Invisible Woman is of a nervous, bitchy, whiny, indecisive, overly emotional little girl playing grown up, and they cake so much make-up onto her face and hair that she ends up looking less realistic than the Thing.

The Invisible Woman is a completely tedious and dreadful character that’s largely defined by negative qualities. Her and Reed are on attempt #4 to get married. The idea that these two keep trying to get married and keep having things come up to stop the vows from being taken is a good one, but instead of the film treating it with a knowing wink acknowledging the history of wedding interruptions in comic book history, it’s made Sue twitchy, uptight, and questioning not only her marriage to Reed but their entire existence as superheroes.

How long have you been kicking around the Anxiety, hearing me talk about superhero movies? Because if it’s more than a week you know what’s coming:

I HAVE LITTLE INTEREST IN SUPERHERO STORIES ABOUT SUPERHEROES WHO DO NOT WANT TO BE SUPERHEROES.

Honestly, if that’s the story you want to tell, then why tell it? It’s one thing if someone like Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) temporarily wants out because his superpower has hugely negative consequences, but even then I get tired of it real quick. Do you know what superhero never existed? Mister Mopey Pants. Or Sister Mopey Pants. Do you know why?

Because who the f*ck wants to read about a superhero who’s depressed every month? (Wait. Wasn’t that Spawn during his “sit in the alley” years? Maybe there is a reason these stupid stories keep getting told and that reason is that I’m out of touch.) RISE even includes the freaking SILVER SURFER, who’s not exactly know for bringing the happy fun time with him. Honestly, what were the creative people thinking? We’ve got a somber cosmic visitor so let’s make one of our main characters be all “I don’t think I want to do this anymore.” It’s nonsense, even if we didn’t go through this plot with Ben, Reed, and Sue the first time around.

Apparently, Sue wanting to get married manifests a new superpower that makes everyone else stupid. This power has a particular effect on director Tim Story’s narrative, which tells us right up front that this is attempt #4, but then has everyone act like this is attempt #1. Johnny (Chris Evans) tries to get Reed to agree to a bachelor party (said party consisting of Reed, Johnny, and Ben), and right before the wedding, Sue is pouting to Alicia Masters (Kerry Washington) about this marriage not feeling right and how they’ll never be normal. Sue is a bit uncomfortable about their celebrity status, yet still decides to hold their wedding in the middle of freaking New York City. Reed agrees to go out with Johnny and Ben, and of course Johnny sets Reed up with two hotties who are all over him.

Reed has made such a big deal about how he would only agree to a bachelor party as long as there were no “exotic dancers” that I’m pretty sure these women are escorts.

They’re all over him, he eventually loosens up and has some fun, and then Sue shows up with General Hager (Andre Braugher) to look all angry at Reed for having fun. I mean, it’s a bachelor party. What did she expect? She revels in telling Reed later on that she’s not actually mad at him because her bachelorette party was super crazy, but we don’t get to see that.

Probably because Sue’s only friend is Alicia and-

Right. That brings this up – who the hell are all these people at their wedding? They’re just nameless people from Wedding Central Casting. Why does Sue need to have this big, fancy public wedding if no one there acts like they even know these people. It’s particularly funny at the end of the movie when Reed and Sue try to get married again. Attempt #5 comes in Japan and, I swear, their wedding is full of guests from Wedding Central Casting in Japanese costumes. Who are these people? Did Ben and Johnny walk around Japan and collect random people?

Or are these more of Johnny’s escorts paid to act like a wedding party?

What adds to the general dreariness of the film is that Johnny has a run-in with the Silver Surfer and as a result, his powers are on the fritz. Basically, if you touch Johnny, your powers and his exchange bodies. Why? This subplot actually takes the most enjoyable character and wraps him in a wet blanket for much of the film. It’s tedious to watch and the payoff of having Johnny go all Super Skrull at the end of the movie when he combines all of the FF’s powers into his body isn’t worth it, as cool as it is to look at. (And why everyone touching at once sends all their powers into Johnny is … yes, something better not thought about.)

RISE is a very simple film that almost seems designed for children. Characters have little complexity and everything happens because the story needs it to happen, not because it makes any kind of sense.

The relationship between Ben and Johnny is still the best part of this franchise, and Chiklis and Evans do everything that’s asked of them. As bad as RISE is, they are enjoyable to watch – at least until Johnny gets all emotional with Frankie Raye (Beau Garrett) about her needing to trust them or else the world is going to get destroyed.

I mean, honestly, you’re the freaking Fantastic Four and there’s an army officer holding a gun on you and YOU STOP IN YOUR TRACKS TO ASK PERMISSION EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END?

Speaking of being destroyed – when RISE was released, people lost their bananas over the fact that Galactus is a big storm cloud instead of, you know, Galactus. I’m sure I complained about it, too, but now … it’s really not a big deal. (It’s amazing how the greatness of the whole Avengers cinematic franchise has mellowed many of us.) In fact, I think it’s a pretty cool visual idea and when this big cosmic cloud is about to consume the Earth, it feels like a major threat.

There’s a good movie in here somewhere, but I have never wanted Jessica Alba on-screen less than I do in RISE. Ioan Gruffudd isn’t much better as Reed, and there’s nothing Andre Braugher can do with the simplistic General Hager. RISE is the kind of movie where the end of the world is coming and people like Hager and Reed are still fighting battles begun in high school.

Doug Jones and Laurence Fishburne team up to give the Surfer more decency and intelligence than anyone else around them, although the whole idea that Surfer is willing to save the Earth because Sue reminds him of someone … ugh.

Is RISE better than Story’s first FF film?

Sure.

Maybe.

I don’t care.

I’m glad we never got a third FF film if it was going to be of this quality. I’d rather have seen a MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE movie with Ben and Johnny on a road trip. Given what Chiklis and Evans have brought to these past two films, that would have been a fun movie to watch.

FANTASTIC FOUR (2005): A Few Days in Space. What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Fantastic Four (2005) – Directed by Tim Story – Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Kerry Washington, Maria Menounos, and Stan Lee.

FANTASTIC FOUR is an incredibly odd duck.

Parts of the Tim Story-directed feature are incredibly good, yet other parts are incredibly awful, and the result is a film that I’m never entirely sure what to do with – sometimes, I can shut my brain off and enjoy it well enough and other times, I can’t stand the sight of it. There’s two primary areas of conflict that FANTASTIC FOUR creates for me: in the film’s story and in its acting. In both instances, the film offers heaping helpings of both, which ultimately ends up leaving me conflicted more than either appreciative or appalled with what’s here, though there’s a slight lean towards the latter.

If you’ve been around the Anxiety for a bit, you know how I feel about cinematic adaptations: I own the source material and I have an imagination, so I don’t need the current movie version of a book or a character to be an exact match of the comic, the book, the play, the cartoon, the movie, etc. What I want most out of a movie is to be entertained by the movie. If I am, great. If not … then a movie opens itself up to criticism about why what’s on the screen isn’t as good as what’s in the source material.

And that’s an area where FANTASTIC FOUR falls a bit short – what’s on the screen isn’t superior to what’s best about the source material. The FF are at their most enjoyable when they’re a fun, adventuresome family, but Story and his production staff have largely gutted that conception from these characters, replacing that core attribute with a group of people who are not all that much fun, certainly not adventuresome, and barely a family.

Instead, Story has created a group of awkward, bickering children walking around in adult bodies. It’s not an entirely ineffective idea, and as long as Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) is around to play the grown-up, there’s some value in it.

The movie opens with a broke Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) going to the uber-successful Victor von Doom (Julian McMahaon) to ask for money to fund his next project, researching a cosmic storm that he believes is the origin of life on Earth. Victor enjoys making Reed sweat, of course, and he wins on every level by agreeing to make this project happen: he gets 75% of any profits generated and he gets to show off his closeness with Reed’s ex-girlfriend, Susan Storm (Jessica Alba).

The group goes to space, something goes freak-of-nature with the cosmic storm cloud, and the group lands back on Earth, where they slowly discover their powers.

That’s where the story goes to turd.

It’s understandable, of course, that Ben Grimm would not be happy with being turned into a big piece of walking orange rock, and there’s a nice balance with Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) being absolutely thrilled with his powers. It’s the reactions to their powers from the middle three characters – Reed, Sue, and Victor – that sink this narrative.

After his powers manifest, Ben breaks out of Victor’s place (where they’ve been staying post-accident) and walks back to his fiance’s place, where she rejects him because he’s a monster. So much for love. Ben goes for a walk and ends up sitting on a bridge, where he encounters a man who’s going to jump off the bridge in a suicide leap. When this dude sees the Thing, he freaks and heads back into traffic. Ben steps in to save him, taking the full brunt of force from an oncoming rig, which causes a ridiculously huge accident, with car after car after car crashing and piling up. It’s the kind of accident that only happens in movies, which is okay, but the crowd that gathers on the walking bridge to watch everything unfold isn’t.

Why? Well, Story apparently feels that every freaking action scene in this movie (except for the one that happens in space) needs to happen in front of a crowd of New York City onlookers. It’s kind of maddening, to be honest, and makes me wonder if he wasn’t taking money on the sly from an extras casting agency. is the constant use of crowds supposed to make FANTASTIC FOUR some kind of metaphor for our celebrity-driven culture? If so, it’s incredibly clumsily handled, as there’s no investigation or examination or rumination of celebrity here – it’s just that when the FF goes outside, a crowd gathers to watch.

Reed, Sue, and Johnny show up on the bridge to help out. Everyone is freaking out over the Thing, thinking he’s the cause of all the bad stuff that’s happening, but by the end of the FF saving everyone, people love them. Well, everyone except Ben’s fiance, who shows up on the scene to put her engagement ring on the ground. It’s a stupid scene. Even if you reveal yourself to be so shallow that you don’t want to marry the person you love because they develop a problematic skin disorder, calling off that engagement by putting your ring on the ground in front of a crowd of people is pretty classless. Maybe Ben just has poor taste in women, or maybe stupid things happen in this movie just because the story is clumsily put together. The way the scene plays in the movie, it happens just because Story and Co. thought seeing Ben struggling to pick that ring up off the ground with his big rock hands would engender sympathy for him on our part.

The press is super interested in all of this arm-stretching, invisible-turning, fire-starting group activity, but three out of the four of them don’t want any press, so while Reed and Sue act like the very idea of them talking to the press is tantamount to selling their newborn to US Weekly for a dollar. Johnny, of course, goes off and yaps away to the gathered press, infuriating the rest of them, and resulting in Reed telling everyone they’re grounded at his lab until he can figure out a way to reverse the process.

Ugh. I hate, hate, hate movies about people with amazing powers who don’t want those powers. Why do people keep making these stories? I’m not plunking down money to watch people with awesome powers be total tools about it. It’s the equivalent of hearing someone complain about their parents buying them the wrong kind of car. Your parents bought you a car! You’re really going to whine about how they bought you a BMW instead of a Merc? Or because they bought you a silver Fusion instead of a black Fusion?

We get this protracted middle section with the FF couped up at Reed’s place. Johnny constantly complains about being trapped and I’m totally on his side. Reed is trying to get his machine working for Ben, but I don’t want to watch all of this mopiness and constrained behavior. This is the FF! I want to see them out adventuring. If this whole middle section was working, then fine, but it doesn’t work, and Johnny’s antics and agitation clearly demonstrate that it doesn’t.

Victor’s not much help, either. He’s been altered by the cosmic storm, too, and his flesh is slowly peeling away to reveal metal skin beneath. I just do not understand what they’ve done to Doom in this movie, turning him into this ego-maniacal, narcissistic tool with organic metal skin and the ability to fire lightning out of his hands. How is this cool? When Victor finally dons his metal mask (which he gets by stealing it from a storefront window, an act that is probably the single-dumbest thing in this entire movie) and puts on his green cloak, it looks like the kind of costume you’d see on a mediocre cosplayer. And when Victor tells Reed, “Call me Doom,” it’s laughably bad, not fear-inducing. Here we have one of the absolute greatest villains of all-time and Story has reduced him to being a complete tool.

Reed and Sue fair no better than Victor, unfortunately. Sue has been working at Von Doom Industries as Victor’s head of Genetics Research, which plays about a 1% role in the film. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it – Jessica Alba seems like a perfectly nice person but her acting range is severely limited. She had to be cast here because Fox wanted a name star somewhere in the mix, and that’s fine, but if you cast a star who can’t convincingly play the role you hire them to play, either find someone else or tailor the role to meet their strengths.

Sue is a mess of a character. She’s like this spoiled little girl throughout most of the movie, upset with Reed’s communication skills the way a 16-year old girl is upset with her older boyfriend for wanting to hang out with the guys instead of staying in with her. When she’s not pouting, she’s playing the mother hen, and Alba has no more ability to make that aspect believable.

Reed is perhaps the single worst superhero in any of these modern movies. He’s just incredibly boring to watch, and the character seems pieced together by random attributes rather than by a solid idea of who they wanted Reed Richards to be. There’s never a sense that he’s all that smart, either, as all of his experiments seem to fail. He sucks the life out of this movie, and when Gruffudd and Alba are on the screen together, it’s incredibly painful to watch.

Luckily, we’ve got Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis around to keep things moving. Evans is perfect as Johnny Storm, cracking wise, pulling pranks on Ben, and hitting on every female in his path. Chiklis is great at being the grounded center of the movie. The lovable animosity between them is the best part of the film, and I would have preferred to see a movie built around Evans and Chiklis instead of around Reed and Sue.

The final battle takes place in the middle of a parted crowd and the FF win. Hooray. It’s a bit of a letdown of an ending (four heroes vs. one bad guy!), just like FANTASTIC FOUR is a bit of a letdown as a movie.