Writer/Director Shane Black adapts Donald Westlake’s character Parker in his newest film Play Dirty.
Shane Black and Christmas go together like peanut butter and chocolate. It just goes without saying that Play Dirty, the writer/director’s newest film, takes place during the yuletide season. An adaptation of the Donald Westlake character Parker (who’s taken many a form over the years by Lee Marvin, Mel Gibson, Jason Statham). The character now played by Mark Wahlberg finds himself in an updated, stylized world of friends and foes that are quick to quip. Though this iteration of Parker does drop the savage desolation of lean crime fiction.
As the usual setup, Parker (Wahlberg) has a heist go awry that has his crew dead and a deadly South American black op (Rosa Salazar) to blame. Parker wastes no time in trying to scheme his way to revenge that involves a South American Dictator, the Mob (or the Outfit… this is a Parker adaptation after all), who threw him out of New York, and a sunken ship filled with treasure (is there any other kind). Putting together a ragtag crew (LaKeith Stanfield, Keegan-Michael Key, and Chai Hansen) that just may not be capable enough to pull off the job at hand and may get Parker killed.
Play Dirty, in its current iteration, is a fun ride of a heist film with blips of the kind of existential brutality that Westlake is known for in his Parker novels. Black seems to be wanting to make more of a The Hot Rock style heist film (based on another Westlake creation). One does have to wonder if Black and producer Robert Downey Jr. had tried to get the property but couldn’t and decided to use the Parker character (which they could get) instead of Dortmunder. Play Dirty, from its opening moment through its two-hour run time, plays like the everything-goes-wrong style comedy that The Hot Rock is.
All of this makes for an odd fit for anyone who has a passing knowledge of the Parker character and Westlake’s series. Even stranger still is Wahlberg, who seems to be cast because he was halfway between Dortmunder and Parker. A guy who you could see as easily be exasperated by karma biting him in the ass as he is throwing goons off the building. It does make for a sometimes-uneven road that, if one goes along with it, is rewarded with some truly fun set pieces and character moments. Everything between Wahlberg and Stantfield is gold. The same for once the crew is put together.
Everything else is less so. Salazar and her entire storyline are the weak link here, as she’s drawn as a femme fatale, then a goofy, quirky pseudo-love interest. Black has done too good a job at the beginning with Thomas Jane to make us ever forget for a moment his fate. Maybe that’s the point of it all, but it saddles Salazar with the unhelpful task of constantly being on the wrong side of things and playing it as such. Which makes the ending all the more… strange and tonally out of place.
If one can forgive Play Dirty of its narrative bumps, you’ll find an exceedingly entertaining heist film that should have gone to the big screen.