I somewhat enjoyed the film. For a straight to stream action comedy, it was probably the best yet.
However, I find it surprising that Shane Black (a pulp novel lover) would adapt a parker book into a comedy. That's not what parker is about. Westlake the author had a crime comedy series called Dortamunder that he would take a break from with parker, which was cold and dark. It was such an abberation from his normal comedy capers that he used a pseudonym (Richard Stark) - this premise is obviously a big influence on the Stephen king story "the dark half".
Interestingly (in my opinion) while the author (Westlake) was alive, there were many adaptations of the Parker novels, but tWestlake refused to allow them to use the name Parker in the films. Point blank (lee marvin), The outfit (robert duvall), Payback (mel gibson), are all based on Parker novels but the protagonist was given a different name. While Westlake was alive, to my knowledge, the only time he allowed the name Parker to be used outside of the books was for a few comic book adaptations by Darwyn Cooke (the adaptations are very true to the books, and are wonderfully illustrated).
After the author died, they started using the name Parker willy nilly (there is a not great Jason Statham film 'Parker' - so they really came out the gates swinging ha).
I somewhat enjoyed the film. For a straight to stream action comedy, it was probably the best yet.
However, I find it surprising that Shane Black (a pulp novel lover) would adapt a parker book into a comedy. That's not what parker is about. Westlake the author had a crime comedy series called Dortamunder that he would take a break from with parker, which was cold and dark. It was such an abberation from his normal comedy capers that he used a pseudonym (Richard Stark) - this premise is obviously a big influence on the Stephen king story "the dark half".
You've made me want to read the Parker novels now.
Interestingly (in my opinion) while the author (Westlake) was alive, there were many adaptations of the Parker novels, but tWestlake refused to allow them to use the name Parker in the films. Point blank (lee marvin), The outfit (robert duvall), Payback (mel gibson), are all based on Parker novels but the protagonist was given a different name. While Westlake was alive, to my knowledge, the only time he allowed the name Parker to be used outside of the books was for a few comic book adaptations by Darwyn Cooke (the adaptations are very true to the books, and are wonderfully illustrated).
After the author died, they started using the name Parker willy nilly (there is a not great Jason Statham film 'Parker' - so they really came out the gates swinging ha).