'Play Dirty' Review: A Criminal Waste of Shane Black’s Talents
- Dan Bremner
- Oct 3
- 4 min read
By Dan Bremner - October 3, 2025
What is Play Dirty about?
The new film from all-timer writer-director Shane Black, Play Dirty, adapts the long-running Parker novels, a series of brutal, stylish heist stories that have already seen screen versions starring everyone from Lee Marvin to Mel Gibson to Jason Statham. For me, it’s always bittersweet when Black drops a new film. Here’s a guy who gave us Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys, two of the sharpest studio films of the past twenty years, and yet he’s spent the better part of a decade in director jail thanks to 2018’s misbegotten The Predator. If the universe had any sense of justice, we’d be on The Nice Guys 5 by now. Instead, we get this: a Mark Wahlberg-fronted streaming action-comedy dumped on Amazon Prime that even Amazon itself seems to have forgotten to advertise.
The words “streaming film” start flashing in neon as soon as the film begins. The CGI is so instantly noticeable, it’s like Amazon’s VFX department was playing catch-up with a PS3. Every explosion, car crash, and fall off a cliff looks like it was rendered in the same engine as Grand Theft Auto IV. I thought we’d hit rock bottom with Netflix’s The Gray Man, but apparently, the industry has just collectively decided stuntmen are obsolete and rubbery polygons are the future. Nothing takes you out of a supposedly “gritty” heist thriller faster than a CGI Mark Wahlberg being shot and falling off a cliff (Could they not have done that practically? They managed it several decades ago).
Shane Black’s voice does poke through now and again. The dialogue occasionally crackles with his trademark wit, and of course, in true Shane Black fashion, the whole thing is set at Christmas. There are moments, fleeting but there, where you catch a glimpse of the writer who once made Hollywood believe buddy comedies could be art. Unfortunately, the script too often gets drowned out by generic plotting, overblown action, and a lead performance that does the film no favours.
Mark Wahlberg as Parker is one of the most baffling bits of casting I’ve seen in a while. Wahlberg is the undisputed king of fake streaming films that appear fully formed on a homepage and vanish within weeks (Remember The Family Plan or The Union? Me neither), so maybe it makes sense on paper. But Parker is meant to be ruthless, calculating, and terrifyingly competent, the kind of character who leaves blood on the walls and calmly walks out the door. Wahlberg plays him on autopilot, alternating between muttering and shouting, with no real menace or charisma. He’s not Parker. He’s just Wahlberg, jogging through another mid-budget paycheck, doing the same thing he's done the past decade.
Thankfully, LaKeith Stanfield injects some much-needed life into proceedings as Grofield, Parker’s sharp-witted partner. He gets the best lines, brings a loose energy that bounces well against Wahlberg’s dead weight, and at least makes you wish the film had been about him instead. The supporting cast is full of wasted talent, but Stanfield is the lone bright spot, delivering a performance that feels like it wandered in from a better film.
The plot is serviceable enough on paper: a “heist of a lifetime” that spirals into a war with the mob. That’s classic Parker territory, and it’s easy to see why so many filmmakers have gravitated toward Donald E. Westlake’s novels. But instead of playing the material straight, Black’s version leans too hard on clichés and half-baked subplots. The heists themselves are ridiculous; one involves derailing a train and killing what seems like hundreds of innocent civilians in the process, and no one bats an eyelid. For a Shane Black film, it’s frustratingly dumb, lacking the intelligence and wit he usually smuggles into his pulp setups.
Sometimes it wants to be a slick, nihilistic action-thriller; sometimes it leans toward knockabout comedy, and sometimes the film lurches into pseudo-serious melodrama. The result is a film that feels like it was stitched together in post by three different editors with competing visions. The pacing is just as messy: the first half breezes by with dumb fun and big set-pieces, but the second half drags under the weight of convoluted subplots, predictable double-crosses, and a finale that can’t decide if it wants to be bittersweet or a punchline.
There’s a particularly bitter irony that Black managed to get more of his personality into Iron Man 3 (A Marvel tentpole loaded with studio mandates) than he does here in a supposedly personal adaptation of a pulp classic. Play Dirty has its fingerprints in spots, sure, but it mostly feels like a film anyone could’ve written, directed, or sleepwalked through. For a filmmaker of Black’s calibre, that’s almost worse than making something outright bad.
Is Play Dirty Worth Watching?
Play Dirty isn’t unwatchable. There are flashes of fun, Stanfield is a delight, and if you put it on in the background while you doomscroll, it’ll do the job. But it’s hard not to feel deflated watching such a talented filmmaker churn out something this generic. It’s not a disaster, just another instantly forgettable streaming thriller designed to exist in your algorithm for a week before being swallowed by the void.
Play Dirty was released by Amazon MGM Studios via Prime Video on October 1, 2025
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