I’m a fan of Donald E. Westlake book series, and I thoroughly enjoyed Mel Gibson’s take on Parker in Payback.  Pretty much all of the movies are varied takes on one of the books from the series where Parker is betrayed by his cohorts and left for dead.  The other books in the series detail different capers he participates in.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie because i had SERIOUS trepidation given the trailer with its focus on one-liners and the contemporary style of action movies that are usually badly filmed, and Jennifer Lopez.  The first few minutes of the movie worried me because they had Parker being WAY more chatty than he should be. Parker is a traditional hard-boiled character, he is an “ethical” criminal, he doesn’t talk much except through his actions, and he has a strict set of rules that he follows.

As the movie went on the Parker I was familiar with began to show his face and Jennifer Lopez didn’t annoy me as I expected, and there was no shoehorned in romance.  It’s another solid piece of work from Jason Statham, following Safe which was another smartly done action film from him. This is worth checking out.