PLAY DIRTY. Sometimes (often? always?) the thing that suits is a rollicking actioner in the classical mode. Something with gunfights and car chases and heists and revenge, hopefully a soupçon of dark humor and sex appeal, maybe even set at Christmastime — a Shane Black movie, in other words.
Black, to use the Wayback Machine, did as much as anyone to usher in the era of brawny, ideally clever but sometimes brain-dead, foul-mouthed, blood-drenched action stuff upon which so many of us were raised. He also set, raised and raised again the bar for a screenwriter’s potential payday, but, this not being a trade publication, we’ll set that aside for now. With Lethal Weapon (1987), Black ushered in a new era in marquee movie violence, and the industry spent several decades chasing the dragon of his imprimatur. As with so many things, though, his cheeky, swaggering brand of improbable buddy comedy-drama eventually fell out of favor (or became impossibly expensive to reproduce). From the audience perspective, he was in the wind for a while (probably enjoying the fruits of his labor), but re-emerged with his directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), a hard-boiled, high-Black L.A. noir that re-launched Robert Downey Jr.’s career and remains, in this household, a Christmas classic. For better or worse, it didn’t exactly recast Black as a white-hot director, but it has afforded him opportunities like this one. Play Dirty is an adaptation of the collected Parker novels of Donald Westlake/Richard Stark, the throughline of which is all cold calculation and merciless vengeance.
Parker stories have been adapted for the screen (with extremely mixed results) since the ’60s, but something about their almost-absurdist tonal blend and unrelenting cynicism seems to have eluded Hollywood minds for the last decade or so, perhaps rightly so. On the page, Parker narratives are lean and brutal, products of their mid-century origins and completely lacking in capes, mech-suits and multi-dimensional phase-shifts. They are definitively hard-boiled, in other words, right down to Parker’s evident absence of compassion or empathy. But, maybe because we live in an era of celebrated sociopathy, he’s back.
Black is clearly a diehard fan of the genre (see just about everything he’s ever done) and possesses an intellect and sensibility that allows him to synthesize his influences into something respectful of the roots but also irreverent, modern and, in its anachronisms, a little bit timeless. So a Parker story, or at least the vital tropes and tone thereof, seems like a natural fit.
The fact that this is a streaming release suggests a lack of faith on the part of the moneylenders, probably not without good reason. This is a bit of a throwback after all. But for that and the slight taint of degradation from being denied a theatrical release, I found it pretty satisfying.
After a horse-track cash-room heist goes bad, Parker (Mark Wahlberg) finds himself in a position to get an old crew back together and boost about a billion dollars in artifacts from the Outfit, the government of the nation to whom the good belong and the billionaire who would make them his own. And, of course, exact some revenge in the process. The screenplay, by Black, Charles Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi, makes Parker as boldly unrepentant as ever, albeit with a higher degree of suave and a collection of tailored mock turtleneck sweaters. It departs from the source material a little, though, in its overlay of quippy-ness, Christmas lights and large-scale set pieces — all Black trademarks for which I am and have always been a consummate sucker.
It also assembles a pretty stellar supporting cast, with LaKeith Stanfield as Parker’s would-be thespian right-hand Grofield, Keegan-Michael Key (sporting an extravagant but surprisingly flattering mustache) and Claire Lovering as married co-conspirators, Tony Shaloub as Outfit kingpin Lozini and a host of others. And, naturally, a liberal portion of summary violence meted out with droll asides.
Play Dirty reallywants to be a blockbuster like they (read: Black) used to make, and it almost gets there. Some of the sequences suffer a little for their obvious digital origins, sure, and its debut on the smaller screen diminishes its grandeur. By the same token, though, it’s almost better that it feels a little like a treasured VHS discovery from the distant past, all decked out and studded with stars. And it also represents the return of a version of Wahlberg that some of us (lapsed Catholics, perhaps) have been missing for all his wholesome family fare. Here, he’s back to his shitheel Southie roots, dispatching his enemies and dropping f-bombs with aplomb.
It’s all silly, fun, escapist stuff from the ’90s with a 21st century glow-up and I’m here for it. R. 125M. PRIME.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes, call Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456, Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in No Kings II.