Pun Salad

Well, I thought I was going to like this better. I read and enjoyed the Parker novels by "Richard Stark" (Donald Westlake pseudonym). The previous Parker movies (with, variously, Lee Marvin, Mel Gibson, Robert Duvall, …) have been uneven, but good enough so I was willing to take a chance on this one. Shane Black wrote and directed, and he's done good stuff in the past.

Mark Wahlberg plays Parker here. For those who don't know: he's a thief, operating under his own not-particularly-moral code of ethics. This requires him, occasionally, to hook up with a crew of fellow thieves. Among which, according to that saying, honor is lacking. The opening heist demonstrates that, as most of the team is betrayed and murdered by … no spoilers here.

But this sets Parker on a quest for revenge and retribution. Which turns into an unlikely, and unlikeable, Ocean's 11-style caper, but with ultraviolence, chase scenes, and a lot more bad words (well, just multiple repetitions of one bad word). It's very formulaic, and I kept dozing off.

Worst of all: the script turns Parker into kind of a wisecracker. That's not faithful to the books. In fact, this has the feel of a previously-existing script that someone demanded be turned into a Parker movie, and that was accomplished grudgingly, in a slapdash fashion.