Title – Play Dirty (2025)

Director – Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang)

Cast – Mark Wahlberg, Rosa Salazar, LaKeith Stanfield, Keegan-Michael Key, Nat Wolff, Tony Shalhoub

Plot – A group of robbers lead by Parker (Wahlberg) attempt to pull off the heist of the centaury but before they do so they must learn to work together and overcome a fellow dastardly crew overseen by Lozini (Shalhoub).  

“Evan robbers get robbed”

Review by Eddie on 20/10/2025

Something’s happened to Shane Black and I don’t like it.

It’s hard to imagine when watching Black’s newest feature, the Amazon Prime original Play Dirty, that this is the same writer and director responsible for directing films such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys and writing classics such as Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and Last Action Hero.

Seemingly unleashing his last amount of creative juice with the 2016 release of cult comedy favourite The Nice Guys, with only the awful The Predator and now this forgettable streaming trash to lay his hat on in the near decade since, Black has hit a massive brick wall that makes one wonder if there’s any chance he is ever going to break through it or climb over it in the future.

An adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s famous Parker series, Dirty certainly has a lot of the ingredients you would associate with having a good time and on paper this film appears to be the type of throwaway fun feature that perfectly suits the direct to streaming realm but within the first 10 minutes of this arduously long feeling exercise, where the audience gets to lay witness to some of the worst CGI horse carnage their ever likely to see, you can sense things are not going to end well.

Loaded with a talented cast, who all get to ease into autopilot mode and are led into battle by another sleepwalking Mark Wahlberg performance, Dirty struggles to bring any type of energy or enthusiasm to proceedings as we are thrown into a plot involving Wahlberg’s Parker leading a gang of criminals to pull off the heist of the century, one that never seems to have any serious stakes or reasonings or care for human life (the general disdain the characters have here for ending civilian lives is quite bizarre), making this a bland of a heist film as you’re likely to watch.

Unable to showcase Black’s way with action or comedy while also sadly failing to see the talented screenwriter do much in the character development/interaction space, Dirty feels like a lazy and uninspired feature, one that no one was overly invested or interested in outside of the pay cheque and trip to Australia for filming, a sad new chapter in the story of one of Hollywood’s most unique talents who has apparently lost his ability entertain.

Final Say –

A sad and sorry excuse for a heist film and a dour and boring action/comedy, Play Dirty is an unenjoyable and pointless waste of talent and two hours marking this down as another disappointing career moment for Shane Black.

1 unhappy racing punter out of 5