When I heard Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Shane Black and Robert Downey, Jr. were reuniting to make a Parker movie, I was overjoyed. Black’s The Nice Guys is one of the best movies of the last decade, and the Parker books is one of my all-time favorite crime series. Then, I didn’t hear anything about the project for a while. When I heard RDJ was replaced by Mark Wahlberg, I was a bit dismayed. (Downey still hung around and served as producer.) Not that he’s terrible or anything. I just couldn’t really see him as Parker. (To be fair, Downey wasn’t exactly perfect casting either, but I think he could’ve made it work if he dialed down his schtick.) The good news is Wahlberg fares well enough in the role. If you go in hoping for a better than average Marky Mark movie, I’d say you’d get your money’s worth.
The opening robbery scene is a perfect amalgamation of author Donald E. Westlake’s hardboiled style and Black’s brand of humorous violence. The heist goes off the rails in record time and sometimes in jaw-dropping manner. This sequence was so much fun that I was pretty much with it from then on. Heck, I could even admit Marky Mark was OK in the lead.
In true Parker fashion, our antihero gets ripped off after the score and goes out for revenge. He hesitates to pull the trigger when the thief who betrayed him (Rosa Salazar from Alita: Battle Angel) offers to cut him in on an even bigger caper: Stealing a billion in gold from a small South American country.
Black surrounds Wahlberg with a top-notch crew of supporting characters. He gives them the majority of the comic dialogue so Wahlberg can still (more or less) be the stoic leading man. Lakeith Stanfield is funny as his partner in crime who only steals to support his independent theater productions. Black’s co-stars from The Predator, Keegan-Michael Key and Thomas Jane are also fun as members of the crew, and Tony Shaloub is amusingly cranky as the head of “The Outfit”.
Oh, and if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Black like me, you may or may not fist-pump just at the sight of Christmas decorations.
Do I wish Play Dirty was more faithful to the character? Sure. Did I absolutely enjoy myself? Yup. Ultimately, Play Dirty is breezy, funny, and violent fun. It’s rough when it needs to be. It’s funny when it wants to be.
I mean, it’s not perfect. The CGI during the big train derailment scene is a bit wonky. That said, I enjoyed myself. Overall, I liked it about as much as Wahlberg’s underrated Spenser reboot.
I think most fans of the literary Parker have come to terms with the fact we may never get a film adaptation that accurately captures the character’s ruthlessness. (Mel Gibson probably came the closest in Payback.) We just hope they are good enough on their own merits until someone else gets a chance to do it right.
