Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Nice Guys) has been making action buddy comedies for nearly four decades, but with Play Dirty, his signature template feels a bit creaky.
Pairing Mark Wahlberg and LaKeith Stanfield in a zigzagging crime thriller based on Donald E. Westlake’s “Parker” novels, the writer/director’s straight-to-Prime Video feature, premiering Oct. 1, boasts his trademark banter but so much arrhythmic plotting and digital insanity that it never settles into a comfortable groove. While its humor often sticks, its mayhem fails to land.
As Westlake’s ruthless thief, Wahlberg affects a single stern glance that resonates far less menacingly—or compellingly—than prior Parker performances by Lee Marvin (Point Blank) and Mel Gibson (Payback), and his deadpan callousness proves a frustrating anchor on the proceedings.
Instead of scarily proficient and merciless, the actor’s turn is generic and one-note, even as his tale spins wildly out of control. That begins at a racetrack where, alongside a crew that includes buddy Philly (Thomas Jane) and recruit Zen (Rosa Salazar), their heist goes awry thanks to the unexpected appearance of an employee who randomly, stupidly decides to rob the robbers.
The ensuing chase culminates with cars crashing into steeds on the track. In the aftermath of this calamity, things go further south when Zen betrays her comrades, stealing their $400,000 haul and killing everyone.
Or, rather, almost everyone, since Parker survives his gunshot, magically awakening in a motel where he’s stashed passports and a gun. On his feet in no time flat, he visits Philly’s wife Grace (Gretchen Mol) and promises to avenge her husband’s slaying and get her the money she was due. In turn, she provides a lead to track down Zen.
A brutal middle-of-the-street shootout later, Parker has found her. There, she admits she was disloyal because she needed seed money for an even bigger job: snatching billions in 15th-century sunken treasure. Her (unnamed) South American country’s dictator (Alejandro Edda) brought it to the U.S. and has it deliberately stolen by the Outfit—a professional organized crime syndicate—that will subsequently give him a cut of the proceeds once the loot is sold to a noxious billionaire (Chukwudi Iwuji).
Play Dirty is overflowing with convoluted double crosses and schemes, and Parker decides to participate in this operation in order to net close to $1 billion. To help, he brings into the fold Grofield (Stanfield), whose rural theater operates at a constant loss, as well as married cohorts Ed (Keegan-Michael Key) and Brenda (Claire Lovering), and ladies-man driver Stan (Chai Hansen).
The crown jewel of this heist is the Lady of Arintero, an enormous ship figurehead which Parker and company believe will be transported out of Manhattan’s United Nations building via subway, thereby affording them an opportunity to intercept its passage by orchestrating a train crash.
Complicating matters, though, is that Parker isn’t supposed to be in New York City because of a deal he struck three years earlier with the Outfit’s big boss Lozini (Tony Shalhoub), who’s not pleased to hear—from his second-in-command Kincaid (Nat Wolff), whom Parker tosses out a window—that the thief is back in town.
Black is in his element writing profanely jokey repartee for members of a ragtag unit, and Play Dirty is funniest whenever it slows down for a second and lets its characters trade good-natured barbs. Those moments are rare, alas, since there’s too much helter-skelter story to contend with, not to mention large-scale set pieces crafted with phony looking CGI.
The artificiality and weightlessness of these sequences, in which human beings bounce back from horrific falls and shrug off injuries at lightning speed, reduces the film to a cartoon. These figures’ interpersonal dynamics is of a goofy Out of Sight sort, yet their exploits veer into Fast and the Furious territory—a marriage that leaves everything insubstantial and inconsequential.
Wahlberg’s Parker has no qualms about committing homicide—he says he does so when it’s necessary—but Play Dirty offsets his murderousness by saddling him with a corny backstory which indicates that he’s really a noble anti-bully crusader. This parallels him with Zen, whose motivation is to return to her people that which was taken from them, and it neuters the material, sanding its sharp edges so the protagonist’s ceaseless killing comes across as merely an R-rated tick.
Unwilling to lean into the original Parker’s no-nonsense pitilessness, Black casts him as a stock tough guy with a rough-and-tumble attitude and a secret heart of gold. As such, he’s a featureless bore, dispensing a few wry one-liners as he plays the angles and adjusts to unforeseen circumstances with on-the-spot cleverness.
Black’s script (written with Charles Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi) undercuts a sense of reality by having its characters react to catastrophes and failures by instantly regrouping and course-correcting, as when Parker learns that their mission has been moved up a day (to right this minute!) and, despite being drunk as skunks, his minions immediately pull off their varied and daring responsibilities.
Striving for slightly exaggerated action, the film goes full bore into absurdity, such that after Parker is thrown off a speeding truck and through a suburban home’s window, he gets up and starts running as if nothing happened—and in fact hops back on the truck so he can then dangle off it via a strap. With no one in actual danger (except the anonymous bad guys whom Parker unceremoniously executes), and zero doubt about the antihero’s eventual triumph, Play Dirty is a spectacle without stakes or suspense.
As with his prior behind-the-camera effort, 2018’s The Predator, Black’s latest only sporadically boasts his distinctive voice, too busy is it indulging in crashing, screaming, exploding craziness. Aside from Wolff, who earns genuine laughs as the cocky, sycophantic Kincaid, the cast is left to make do with a few choice quips and, in Stanfield’s case, some amusing swagger, and the film wraps up in formulaic fashion.
At least Black fans will be happy to know that, true to form, this ramshackle underworld saga takes place at Christmas. Unfortunately, there’s nothing particularly naughty or nice about this tepid attempt at a chaotic comedic caper.
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