Play Dirty Review

After a successful robbery, Parker (Mark Wahlberg) and his crew are betrayed by one of their own. The only survivor, Parker sets about looking for Zen (Rosa Salazar), the one who killed his friends. In the process he inadvertently stumbles into another job, with a much bigger pay day. But it means working with Zen, the one person he knows he cannot trust.

Once again the great Parker is forced to hunt down his ill-gotten gains a second time, after he is betrayed by a member of his crew. That certainly seems to have been the plot to all of the more recent adaptations of Richard Stark’s famous literary character. Mel Gibson (as Porter, not Parker) hunted down his buddy, Val Resnick (Gregg Henry) and the $70,000 he took from him in Brian Helgeland’s delightfully gritty Payback. Then a few years later in the rather forgettable Parker, Jason Statham went after the crew that tried to kill him and took his cut from a heist to fund their next job. A job Parker had declined to be a part of and would now hijack. Now we have Mark Wahlberg taking on the role, with Shane Black as director.

There is a definite Shane Blackian charm to this crazy caper, which is of course set at Christmas. Play Dirty doesn’t exactly do anything new with the heist genre, but thanks to Black’s uniquely twisted sense of humour, there is some fun to be had. I’m actually surprised this wasn’t released closer to the silly season, given its setting. It’s not too dark, not too light stylings make it perfect holiday viewing – for a more grown up audience, that is. Anything is possible when Mr Black is at the helm, and no stoop is too low. Even when he’s trying to make things festive, he’s not afraid to capture society in all its ridiculous depravity. A perfect example being the opening heist, which is pure delicious Blackian calamity, and things do tend to get crazier from there. Like pulling off a very high risk job while mildly intoxicated, or a wild chase through the snow with the booty literally in tow, and many, many gunfights on the streets of New York.

Wahlberg is fine in the lead role. He’s doing his usual nice guy/tough guy act, which is… well, fine. It means he’s able to keep Parker likeable, despite the fact he shoots a lot of people. But it also means he’s not quite as interesting or fun to watch as his co-stars. I can’t help wondering how different Play Dirty would be had Robert Downey Jr. staid in the lead role. There are so many quirky characters that Parker can at times feel almost lost in the background. This includes Keegan-Michael Key, Claire Lovering and Chai Hansen as members of Parker’s crew, and the life of this particular party. As well as Tony Shalhoub’s exasperated mob boss, and Chukwudi Iwuji’s eccentric billionaire with a tangential link to the heist. Wahlberg does at least have good chemistry with the other half of the movie’s central duo, LaKeith Stanfield’s ‘Grofield’. Stanfield is a real scene-stealer as this flamboyant and mildly unhinged conman with a flare for the dramatic. He really livens up the whole movie, taking things to a whole new level of crazy.

Despite some interesting attempts to be clever with the twists, Play Dirty never really manages to pull the wool over your eyes. Not fully, anyway. As much as you are along for this crazy ride, and there are times when it can feel gleefully frenzied, the movie is simply unable to surprise you. Well, there is one surprising thing about Play Dirty, which is that they didn’t play more on the trust issues between Parker and Zen. Salazar is great as the double-crosser who killed Parker’s crew. She brings a confidence and capability to Zen, and in those early scenes, even a cheekiness wrapped in moral flexibility. But that cheekiness goes away pretty quickly, as does the lack of trust. There should be a sense of unease between the two of them. After all, she did murder his friends. You’d think they’d be watching each other like hawks, but no. Which not only robs the movie of some well-deserved tension, it leads to a rather odd decision on the part of Zen.