I didn't think any action hero could sustain as much damage as Arnold Schwarzenegger did in The Last Stand, but Jason Statham as the title thief in this adaptation of the Richard Stark (a/k/a Donald E. Westlake) novel Flashfire might have him beat. Here he's beaten, stabbed, shot, beaten some more, tossed from a speeding car, and stigmatized with a knife. Adding insult to injury, he wears a 10-gallon hat and drawls like Matthew McConaughey. But it's all worth it for the slick, sadistic, and ingenious payback to come. In a replay of Westlake's Point Blank, Parker pulls off a heist, but his crew takes his cut and leaves him for dead. He tracks the creeps to Palm Beach and gets help from Leslie (Jennifer Lopez), a down-on-her-luck real-estate agent who mostly gets in the way. Lopez has lost some of her shine since she kicked ass as a US Marshall in Out of Sight. So has director Taylor Hackford, who was nominated for an Oscar for Ray. As for Statham, I fear he might get beaten up at the box office like Arnold too.
