Play Dirty, 2025.
Directed by Shane Black.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Chukwudi Iwuji, Nat Wolff, Thomas Jane, Tony Shalhoub, Gretchen Mol, Hemky Madera, Alejandro Edda, Dermot Mulroney, Yvonne Zima, Nicole da Silva, Saskia Archer, Claire Lovering, Chai Hansen, and Sebastian Carr.
SYNOPSIS:
Expert thief Parker gets a shot at a major heist, but to pull it off he and his team must outsmart a South American dictator, the New York mob, and the world’s richest man.
The first 30 minutes of co-writer/director Shane Black’s Play Dirty could have been the basis for an entire movie. Considering how little we get to know these characters across 2+ hours (roughly half of them are killed as fast as they are introduced) and that the most major narrative conflict is bafflingly brushed off to the side to be cheaply resolved in the final five minutes, maybe those 30 minutes should have been stretched out into a feature-length film to provide some introductory to the Parker career thief character (played by Mark Wahlberg) and a window into the world of the books this adaptation is based on.
It’s also possible that the entirety of Play Dirty is based on a single book. If that’s the case, it’s akin to being dropped in the middle of a series and having difficulty latching onto much of anything. There is a rumored rule that these streaming-based movies have to start with a bang to grab the viewer’s attention immediately. Here, Shane Black runs with that to absurd lengths with an entire movie’s worth of twists and deaths right up front. Perhaps it’s an attempt to do something refreshing within the crime caper sub-genre, but it mostly comes across as tryhard chaos.
There is actually a setup that emerges from that chaos. Parker’s latest job (despite some unexpected interference and impromptu car chases across a horse racing track, the latter of which is a genius idea for a set piece that is unfortunately rendered ugly through CGI) is a success, and his entire crew is going home with a sizable cut. That is, until Rosa Salazar’s Zen betrays the team and steals the money, killing Parker’s best friend (a wasted Thomas Jane) in the process. Parker speaks to his grieving wife and agrees to take revenge in his name.
While tracking Zen down (every single character is easy to locate here, making the story intolerably contrived and convenient), Parker learns of an even bigger heist that she plans to pull off. It’s far bigger than both of them, with the intent to restore riches to her unspecified South American country homeland, run by a corrupt leader ready to stage a robbery of recently discovered sunken treasure, getting wealthier in the process. She plans to steal it after another group does (a mafia group dubbed The Outfit, run by a character played by Tony Shalhoub, who has a past with Parker) and ropes Parker into the mission. At this point, he is either doing it for the money or to get close to his enemy and exact his vengeance afterward (or possibly both), but whatever conflict or complicated motives the character may have aren’t evident in the performance or the story. The film transitions into a never-ending multi-staged heist from there, continuing to introduce characters and chaos.
The biggest disappointment might be that, for a Shane Black film (co-writing alongside Charles Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi), there isn’t much personality to the characters, the writing, or the humor. The lone exception is struggling stage play experimentalist Grofield (LaKeith Stanfield), who becomes part of Parker’s new crew. His comedic relief (such as getting into different roles a bit too intensely on the heist) works, and generally feels like less of a walking cliché than the others. Even Parker and Zen are reduced to people who steal for different reasons, with one being more noble than the other. The film’s central conceit of robbers robbing robbers feels both half-baked and primarily used for quick jokes rather than serving as the basis for a truly fresh crime caper.
If there is one upside to all of this, it’s that Play Dirty is packed with so much action that the runtime flies by, even if the action isn’t always particularly impressive (shoddy CGI also mars it). However, there is one thrilling set piece involving manipulating the speed of a train and its safety checks so it intentionally barrels off the tracks while carrying the stolen cargo; it’s exciting and engaging, with many of the other sequences lacking that sense of careful structure and bits where it feels as if the heist could fail. Beyond that, everything else comes too easily for these characters; there’s always someone around the corner who knows who they need to find and exactly where they can see them.
None of this is intended to come down on Play Dirty too harshly, since it is still a mild joy to see Shane Black back in his wheelhouse (the film is even set around Christmas), but amidst some of the glib, goofy, and action-packed pleasures here is a filmmaker who has lost a step. It’s a film that ignores the central conflict for two hours and expects anyone to care about its unhappy resolution.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
