PLAY DIRTY Review: The Mark Wahlberg Of It All

I know Parker. You are not Parker.

Play Dirty
The film is now streaming on Prime Video.

Any adaptation carries with it the challenge of capturing some essence of the original inspiration.

Shane Black's Play Dirty captures (almost) none of the essence of its original inspiration, Richard Stark's series of novels revolving around a ruthless thief named Parker. (Richard Stark was one of the pen names used by Donald E. Westlake.)

John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) brilliantly captured the essence of the character. As embodied by Lee Marvin, he is single-minded, he is deadly, and he does not joke.

In Black's new film, scripted by himself, Charles Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi (The Nice Guys, Black's brilliant 70s crime flick), Parker is accompanied by Grofield (LaKeith Stanfield), another character from the Stark books, who is much friendlier and much more likely to talk than Parker, a taciturn character. Play Dirty, however, adjusts Parker to turn him into someone who's much more like Grofield, someone who is ready to quip, even if he sometimes tries to shut Grofield down when he's in the mood to ask questions.

It's a front, a put-on, because we never believe Mark Wahlberg as Parker is really that tough; he's just a bloke with a gun who won't hesitate to shoot someone, anyone. Together, Parker and Grofield regularly shoot people for little to no reason, in a breezy, light, and disposable manner: Oops, ha ha, that guy's dead now, oh well, my bad.

Frankly, it's infuriating, but that's assuming the viewer gets past the prologue, an opening 15 minutes that is filled with preposterous CGI as two cars race onto a horse track while a race is in progress (?!), sending horses and their riders flying hither and thither like bowling pins, leading to Parker's recovery of cash from a truly senseless man who has CGI killed two of Parker's crew and driven away, giggling like an idiot, with his wife and daughter in the car (?!). That leads to the CGI deaths of more of Parker's crew at the hand of Zen (Rosa Salazar), after she strips to her underwear to distract the men (?!).

(I raised my eyebrows and scowled a lot while watching this movie.)

As a longtime fan of the Parker novels, and of much of Shane Black's earlier work, both as a writer and a director -- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys are personal favorites -- I was vastly disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were set too high. Much of the action is reminiscent of the films that Black wrote (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight), only staged and filmed more outlandishly than ever.

And then there's the Mark Wahlberg of it all. He plays Parker as a jaunty sort of fellow who kills in an off-handed way, much like many of the characters he has played in the past. He brings nothing new or distinctive to his role, and so Parker becomes a black hole who sucks all the energy of the other performers into himself.

Of course, it all starts with the script, and I have no idea why Shane Black decided to make Parker into a clone of Grofield or to transform Parker into a character in a bad buddy comedy. Because that's what Play Dirty becomes, after it's done ripping away all logic and sense in its ridiculous opening sequence.