Play Dirty (2025)

There's probably no more damning indictment of this movie than the fact Shane Black released a Christmas action/comedy based on a beloved crime series, and no one seemed to notice or care. I think that's a fair response, too: while there are some strong elements here, the movie as a whole doesn't work. Black can't seem to settle on a tone, the action set pieces feel uncharacteristically uninspired, and the main character is shockingly dull.

It's difficult to say to what degree Parker's shortcomings are due to the script versus the casting. Mark Wahlberg is so wrong for this role, you're left trying to piece together how he ended up in the part. He doesn't come off as likeable, intimidating, or really much of anything. The character is just sort of an empty void.

And before someone chimes in, I realize some of that is an apt description of the character in the books. I've read most of the... okay, I've only actually read the Wikipedia summary of the Westlake series, but I think I got the gist. Regardless of whether Westlake's Parker was likeable, they wanted this version to be so. It sounds like they also gave him more of a code here, since there are a handful of sequences where he behaves honorably. Traditional or not, we're supposed to view this incarnation as having a tough exterior but a heart underneath. Wahlberg just wasn't the right choice for that version of Parker - I'll let fans of the books debate whether he'd work in a more faithful take.

The supporting cast is a lot stronger. Had this movie been centered around LaKeith Stanfield's Grofield, I suspect this would be a very different review. Stanfield plays his character as funny, likeable, and weird. Unlike Parker, you're having fun when Grofield is on screen. Likewise, Rosa Salazar's Zen would have made for a far more interesting lead than Parker. Keegan-Michael Key and Claire Lovering are also entertaining, and Tony Shalhoub works as a villain, albeit not a particularly intimidating one. Everyone except Wahlberg is acting like they're in a better, more offbeat movie. Unfortunately, Black made the one Wahlberg's in.

The plot of this is too convoluted for a full synopsis, but I'll do my best to provide the gist. After Parker's crew is murdered (and he's wounded) by their driver, Zen, he sets out to recover the money she stole from him. The widow of one of his aforementioned murdered crew also asks him to avenge her husband's death. He tracks Zen to New York, a city Parker isn't supposed to go in due to an arrangement with The Outfit, a criminal organization he crossed years earlier. Doing so puts Lozini (Shalhoub) on his trail.

When he catches up with Zen, he learns she's actually a freedom fighter from an unnamed South America country, and she had arguably noble reasons for betraying him. Her nation recently discovered sunken treasure, which their corrupt president is planning to steal and sell with the help of The Outfit. Zen used the money she stole from Parker's crew to finance a heist to steal back the treasure, so that it can benefit her people. Only she quickly realizes she'll need Parker's help to succeed.

Parker assembles a team and plans a heist, involving stealing and derailing a subway train that The Outfit stole and is using to transport the goods. Once they manage this (after a series of misadventures), they learn Lozini was a step ahead - the artifacts aren't on the train at all. For the record, trying to make sense of Lozini's plan is not recommended.

Instead, Parker robs the supposedly impenetrable facility where Lozini is hiding the most valuable artifact. Or he appears to, as his plan involves switching it for a fake and allowing Lozini to recover it, which both embarrasses him in front of the buyer and places him in the crosshairs of the dictator, who assumes Lozini is trying to sell the artifact twice.

Lozini figures out what Parker did and returns to the facility where Parker appears to be in the process of stealing the actual artifact. Only Parker's actually here to blow it up, as that will leave The Outfit functionally bankrupt. I'm not sure why that's a better solution than stealing the damn thing, but it makes for a dramatic moment where Parker gets the drop on his enemy and kills him, a thing he probably could have done without destroying the artifact.

When the dust all settles, we learn that Parker arranged for everything to work out for just about all of his partners. Somehow. He stole a bunch a jewels to pay his crew (as well as the widow at the beginning), leaks details of the dictator's corruption to force him out of power, and all the remaining bad guys are arrested or something.

Just one unfinished piece of business. He meets Zen in a hotel room. She's overjoyed by how things are turning out and is grateful. She even suggests Parker and her should go to her country together. But Parker reminds her there's still the issue of her having murdered his crew, and it turns out he's not over that. He kills her, though the movie shows us he's conflicted about it. She did what she did because she believed in a cause, but he still feels like he owes this to his friend, or possibly that friend's widow.

And... I'm really not sure how the movie expects us to feel about all of that. Is this meant to be a character beat, establishing that Parker is a tough man who doesn't forgive or forget? If so, that's undermined by his unease, as well as by him assuring his friend's widow he was able to keep his promise to kill Zen. But surely we're not supposed to see this as in any way justified? Parker kills a lot of people over the course of this movie with less moral justification than Zen had: none of those people's families get any kind of justice. That's not even touching on the movie's biggest effects sequence, where Parker's team derails a subway train and crashes it into a city street. While the movie avoids showing any civilian casualties, surely they were numerous. This should be the equivalent of a major terrorist attack, and the movie trusts us to shrug it off since Parker was just trying to steal stolen artifacts he (incorrectly) believed were onboard.

I don't think it's automatically a problem that the movie plays fast and loose with morality and human life, but I do think it becomes an issue when it does so then asks us to weigh the value of retribution and justice. You can take this stuff seriously or not, but you can't flip between the two when it's convenient and expect the viewer not to notice.

This isn't just an issue the movie has concerning its relationship to reality: the film seems unwilling to commit to a consistent tone and reality. Half the time it wants to be lighthearted escapism; the other half, a serious noir. There are ways to use this disconnect to build a hybrid tone or tell a complex story (I'd argue Shane Black has managed both over the course of his career), but Play Dirty doesn't accomplish either. If anything, it feels like Black is just tossing things he likes on the screen.

The same goes for the action sequences. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang constructed actions scenes like intricate puzzles. Everything seemed to happen for a reason, building story and character with every beat. Play Dirty, in contrast, just feels lazy. It relies on spectacle - usually courtesy of visual effects - rather than story. It's all big and bombastic when smaller and character-centric would have had more of an impact.

Let's talk Christmas. The entire film plays out over the holiday season, as evidenced by the presence of decorations on New York's streets, as well as the occasional reference in the dialogue. The very end is set on New Year's Eve, with Parker and Grofield wandering through Times Square and talking. But while the holidays are present, they're not really doing much. Occasionally, the movie touches on aspects we're used to - a bit of contrast between destruction and holiday paraphernalia, light themes of reflection around the New Year, and so on - but none of it has much weight. Even more so than with Iron Man 3, I was left with the impression that the holidays were primarily here as a nod to Shane Black's filmography. This wants you thinking about Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It's a recursive reference.

Which is fine. Black's holiday past is, in its own right, a sort of Christmas tradition, albeit a small one. I don't object to him to setting this over the holiday season as a nostalgic reference (or even a marketing ploy). That's fair, but there's not much more to discuss on the topic.

It's a shame this doesn't come together. The supporting cast is really quite impressive. I kept watching scenes where dialogue felt like it should be funnier than it was, but the movie's noir-infused framing and uneven tone made everything less interesting than it could have been. If you're a Shane Black completist, by all means check this out: with luck, you'll have a more positive reaction than I did. But if you're not already a big fan of his work and aren't attached to Parker as a character, you can safely skip this. I'm holding out hope Black still has at least one more great movie in him, but it's not Play Dirty.