FILM
PLAY DIRTY
BACK IN BLACK
At least they’d be good for paté and artisan bread post-job.
★★★
OUT NOW (PRIME VIDEO) / CERT 15 / 128 MINS
DIRECTOR Shane Black
CAST Mark Wahlberg, LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Chukwudi Iwuji, Nat Wolff, Thomas Jane, Tony Shalhoub
PLOT When professional robber Parker (Wahlberg) is double-crossed, he plans revenge — and the biggest heist of his career.
IT HAS BEEN seven years since Shane Black’s last film, the muddled misfire that was franchise-revival-attempt The Predator. Play Dirty feels like course-correction. Yes, obviously, it’s set at Christmas time — good luck finding a film in his catalogue that isn’t — but there are other familiar hallmarks of the writer-director here, too: deadpan dialogue, dead bodies as punchlines, a hard-boiled throwback tone and a smoky score to boot. It’s nowhere near the high-water mark of the man who was once the world’s best-paid screenwriter — but maybe this is enough, for now. This is the latest adaptation of the Parker novel series by Donald E. Westlake, a natural fit for someone of Black’s sensibilities. Somewhat like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Parker is a coldly efficient tough-guy character who has spawned many books but enjoyed mixed results on the screen; unlike Reacher, Parker is a prolific professional robber and all-round scoundrel. “I stole something and I got away with it,” is all the backstory we get on this guy in the film, and there’s something refreshing about how uncomplicated and to-the-point the character is, living by a simple if occasionally murderous code.