Don't tinker with Parker unless you're Richard Stark

Here's an old post about a problematic movie adaptation of Richard Stark's Parker instead of the new post I wanted to write about one of the Parker novels. What's the connection? One of my complaints about Parker, the 2013 Jason Statham movie based on Stark's 2000 novel Flashfire, is the filmmakers' efforts to make Parker more sympathetic. Stark made occasional such efforts when he brought Parker back to life in 1998 after a 24-year hiatus. One of the most notable is the final chapters of Breakout, which, however, are harrowing and wistful in the manner of a lonesome country ballad, rather than cheap, in the manner of a shitty romantic comedy.

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I don't know the politics of Hollywood movie making, but it sure looks to me as if Parker, based on Richard Stark's novel Flashfire, was designed less to render Stark faithfully on screen than it was to show off Jennifer Lopez's character (and her ass).

There's nothing wrong with that justifiably celebrated rear end. But those lower-body close-ups screamed not so much "Sexism!" as they did  "Look at me! No matter what part of me! I'm  a star!"

It's Lopez's presence in the movie, I'm convinced, that accounts for most of the unconvincing light-comic, cheap humanizing, and romantic elements. They're designed to show Lopez off: the reaction shots, the freak outs, the teary bits. She's not terrible, but she can't carry a movie, especially not one whose focus should be elsewhere. Similarly, the movie's not terrible, but it's a lot more a conventional action movie, complete with pro-forma efforts to show that the tough-guy hero is a good guy at heart, than Stark/Westlake/Parker fans probably hoped for. Read the books instead.

(For a scathing review of Parker, complete with links to dissenting opinions, view the excellent Violent World of Parker Web site. Even the positive reviews make exceptions for some of the elements I singled out here: Lopez and the cheap efforts to make Parker more sympathetic.)  

© Peter Rozovsky 2013, 2015

Best Supporting Actors

Pete Postlethwaite

I want to start a Pete Postlethwaite fan club. I had not heard of the late British actor before I watched The Usual Suspects for the first time this week, but amid Kevin Spacey's award mugging and Benicio Del Toro's lisping and mumbling, Postlethwaite, as Kobayashi, stood out for doing what Laurence Olivier is said to have advised Dustin Hoffman to do. He acted, dear boy.

In the potentially cartoonish role of an evil Japanese henchman, Postlethwaite played it straight-faced and thus did a much better, and much less obtrusive, job of showing he was having fun than did Spacey and Del Toro. Naturally it was Spacey who won that year's Oscar for best supporting actor, not Postlethwaite. (But then, Spacey's character faked not only a physical handicap but also a borderline mental one, surefire Oscar bait.)

Not that Spacey's and Del Toro's performances were bad; those guys are too talented for that. But mugging by a good actor is still mugging.  Maybe he and Del Toro felt they had to stand out from a cast that included Giancarlo Esposito, Paul Bartel, Chazz Palminteri, and Gabriel Byrne, doing no better or no worse a job than he always does playing Gabriel Byrne.

Back to Postlethwaite. His performance was the best I've seen by a supporting actor in some time, up there with Paddy Considine's and Aidan Gillen's in Blitz, even worthy of mention in the same breath as Takashi Shimura's work in numerous films for Akira Kurosawa. 

Now it's your turn.  Do some method acting, become thinkers, and answer these questions: Why do some actors mug? Why do others not? Whose fault is it when they do? Are American movie stars more prone to mugging than British, Irish, Japanese, or other stars? What are your favorite performances by supporting actors (in the non-gendered sense; name some favorite supporting actresses, too.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

McKinty reads

In one more piece of evidence that Belfast is the center of the universe,

No Alibis invites you to an evening with Detectives Beyond Borders favorite

Adrian McKinty

to celebrate the launch of his latest novel, Fifty Grand,
on Wednesday, July 8, at 6 p.m.

Cuban cop Mercado has a score to settle on behalf of a deadbeat dad, a ‘traitor’ who skipped free from Castro’s control to set up a new life working illegally in Colorado. He settled in a ski resort popular with the Hollywood Scientology set, where a façade of legality is maintained by the immigrant cleaners and laborers working for below minimum wage while the local sheriff is bribed to turn a blind eye. Mercado Sr.’s dreams of fortune and freedom are shattered when he is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Sworn to avenge his death, Mercado has some obstacles to overcome, not least getting out of Cuba, where visas are as elusive as constant electricity.

Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied politics at Oxford University, and after a failed legal career he moved to the US in the early 1990s. He found work as a security guard, postman, construction worker, barman, rugby coach and bookstore clerk before becoming a school teacher. He now resides in Melbourne, Australia.

NO ALIBIS BOOKSTORE
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BELFAST BT7 1JL
david@noalibis.com
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Here's part of what I had to say about Fifty Grand:

"The book opens with what has to be the most gut-clenchingly tension-upping prologue in all of crime fiction, and it goes on to tell a story about Cuba, espionage and the human costs thereof.

"It's also about class distinctions, exploitation of immigrants and celebrity worship in America, which means it's always timely, and its protagonist takes a dizzying journey from privilege of a kind over to something quite opposite.

"In typical McKinty fashion, deadpan funny lines find their way into the action at the most desperate moments."

McKinty flew all the way from Australia for this reading. Go hear him, buy a book, and stake him to a pint of correctly poured Guinness. It's the least you can do.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009