Metacritic reviews

Parker...is not a great movie....But Parker is nonetheless great fun. It is part of a welcome trend, or counter-trend, in action filmmaking, an effort to strip away the apocalyptic bloat and digital fakery that have overtaken the genre and return to its pulpy, nasty, mechanical roots.

The picture is far from great, but it's a serviceable B-movie with some A-list talent on a slumming expedition.

Crisp and efficient, with the occasional clunky moments, Parker also shows off Jennifer Lopez (literally) to good effect, while mostly squandering the rest of its first-rate cast.

Taylor Hackford directs crisply, unpretentiously. Patti LuPone goes Latina, playing Lopez's soap opera-addicted mom, and Bobby Cannavale is a Palm Beach cop with an eye for Leslie. The action is fast and furious.

The tight-lipped, give-no-quarter Statham is impeccable as the pitiless yet honourable Parker (though fans of the books will no doubt quibble, especially over the British accent). On the other hand, Lopez, that pleasant sex pot, hasn't a hope of producing the tragic desperation of her down-on-her-luck character.

If you're going to saturate a film with so much violence, at least it's nice to see an action hero - or antihero - actually feeling the pain.

Parker is watchable chiefly for Statham, who exudes effortless cool and excels in hand-to-hand combat, as well as demonstrating his skill at wielding some very unlikely weapons.

If you go in knowing what you're getting, you should come out relatively satisfied. Our hero vigorously beats up a parade of bad guys. Lots of bullets fly. There are a couple of decently plotted thefts. And to tell the truth, Statham's Southern accent is nearly worth the price of admission itself.

Tonally, Parker's not so much broad or inclusive as weirdly schizophrenic, vacillating between flat comedy and spiked savagery, the product of a painfully slapdash script that also includes such laughable incidental dialogue as "pizza-I love that sh.t" and "beers and jewels, baby."

The essence of this grindingly violent movie can be summed up by what Parker says of his handgun to a terrified clerk at a check-cashing service: "It's small, but it hurts."