Play Dirty

Based on the Parker book series by Donald E. Westlake, under the pen name Richard Stark, Play Dirty is the story of a ruthless thief and his expert heist crew, who stumble onto the score of a lifetime, but one that will unfortunately put them on a collision course with the New York mob.

First there’s Parker.

Parker is a fictional character that was created by American novelist Donald E. Westlake in 1962 in the novel The Hunter, which was written under his most well-known pseudonym of Richard Stark. Parker went on to be the main protagonist in 24 of the 28 Stark novels.

A professional robber and tough guy that specializes in big heists, Parker is a man forever in his late 30s, early 40s. His first name is never mentioned, nor are many details of his early life, although it’s known he had been in the Army from 1942 to 1944 and was discharged for black-marketeering. A loner with no interest in small talk, and even less use for the social pleasantries, Parker is a taciturn professional, with a shark-like focus either on the job he’s currently working, or with having sex with some dame in between jobs. The character is rare amongst the genre of anti-hero protagonists in that he never develops a conscience, never “turns” good, and definitely does not have a ”heart of good” when it comes to others. He is a ruthless and pragmatic career criminal, with almost no redeeming qualities at all, save for his professionalism and his loyalty to the other criminals he is working with. That said, should someone on the job double cross him, which they always do, Parker will not hesitate to exact a bloody revenge. Parker is a very violent man, but for the most part, he prefers to avoid murder, as a dead body brings police attention, which makes it harder for him to steal things.

Westlake described Parker in The Hunter thusly…

Big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders... His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked like they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. His hair was brown and dry and dead, blowing around his head like a poor toupee about to fly loose. His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless.

Obviously a very handsome guy.

And while Westlake didn’t like to cast potential celebrities for the part, if pressed, he would point to Jack Palance, but this was mostly due to a feeling that he said he got from watching the actor, a feeling that Palance was a real deal tough guy. The character has appeared in several novels by a multitude of authors, comics too, and in multiple films as well, both as Parker, or as thinly disguised homages to Parker, as Westlake often wouldn’t allow the license unless a whole series of his books were optioned at the same time.

Then there’s Shane Black.

I’m a big fan of his movies. If you’re more of a casual movie fan, you might be too and just don’t realize it. Well known for usually setting his films during Christmas, Shane Black was the writer/director of films like The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Iron Man 3. He was at least one of the writers on films like The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Monster Squad, Lethal Weapon 1, 2, and 3, The Last Action Hero, and The Last Boyscout. He also played Hawkins in the original Predator, a film on which was an uncredited script doctor.

And even if they aren’t all the greatest of films (although several of them are), there‘s simply no denying Shane Black’s influence on action movies in the 20th Century. A mentee of William Goldman, who idolized Walter Hill, Black’s style practically defined the action genre for decades. Black’s stories are known for their problematic protagonists, who then become better people by the end of the story, as well as labyrinthine plots, witty dialogue, and of course, as I already mentioned, for being set at Christmas time. Having first noticing it in Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor, the idea is that the beauty of the season serves as a perfect backdrop and a perfect counterpoint to his big signature action sequences.

So, with all of this in mind, and even if the fact that Marky Mark as the film’s star really is pretty shitty, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that Shane Black doing a Parker movie would be a match made in Heaven.

But you’d be wrong.

At first, I was hoping that the fact that this film doesn’t start during Christmas meant that this was a work-for-hire gig for Shane Black, and not one of his own films, but after an opening that is nearly indescribable in its awfulness, the rest of the film takes place at Christmas time, which means that this horrendous piece of shit is definitely a Shane Black movie.

And that makes me sad.

Set in NYC, but clearly filmed on a green-screen backlot somewhere in Australia, professional thieves Parker and Philly are pulling a heist at a racetrack count room when an opportunistic off-duty employee shows up at work with his family, kills one of the crew members, wounds Philly, and drives away in his family sedan with the stolen money.

What follows is maybe one of the most improbable and ludicrous action movie openings ever, as Marky Mark goes on a terrible-looking and frankly stupid chase through the middle of a horse race, where jockeys and horses and characters alike get hit by cars, horses, and each other, but everyone is more annoyed than injured by it all, which then culminates in the opportunistic off-duty employee and father being shot in the head in front of his wife and middle school age child, neither of whom seem very upset by the turn of events.

And then, once the crew is back in their safe house, they are betrayed by one of their own on the heist crew (because that’s what happens in Parker stories). It’s a woman named Zen, and she does it while she is clad in nothing but an extremely see-through bra and a pair of underwear that doesn’t match the bra. Nearly naked and dead-eyed, Zen kills the entire whole crew and wounds Parker, who then falls in a river, and is left for dead.

After sitting through all of that crap, it’s pretty obvious that we’re in for a very subpar movie here…

Awakening sometime later, having recuperated in a safe motel room, and after interrupting a pair of nude extras having sex in a different motel room, so that he can recover his hidden stash of weapons and cash, Parker visits Grace, the wife of his now dead buddy Philly. He let hers know that she’s a widow, and also that he plans to avenge her dead husband.

Recruiting his friend and fellow thief Grofield, who runs a struggling theatre company, Parker tracks down Zen's associate Reggie, who reveals that Zen was a member of a death squad in her home country. After some shooting, a little bit of punching, and bunch of quipping, Parker and Grofield catch up to Zen. It turns out that Zen is chasing a score of her own. Y’see, her country's corrupt President has hired the crime syndicate known as the Outfit, Parker’s hated enemies, to steal an ancient treasure that his country recently found on a shipwreck, that the country will be displaying at the UN soon, all so that he can sell it himself and then keep the money. Zen plans to steal the treasure from the President and use the money to help her people. Parker decides to help her pull off the job, and then kill her.

He doesn’t mention that last part to Zen. He’s sneaky like that.

Parker, Grofield, and Zen recruit married thieves Ed and Brenda Mackey and getaway driver Stan Devers. The plan is to steal the treasure while it’s in transport, after The Outfit has stolen it from the UN and has loaded it onto an automated subway station garbage pick-up train.

Parker plans to derail the train and rob it.

But after a bunch of rigamoroll and CGI nonsense, the train is finally derailed. Unfortunately, the Outfit was apparently one step ahead of Parker and the others, as the containers of treasure were actually filled with rocks. The crew barely escape the arrival of most likely every single cop in the city, who were probably called by every city resident in a several mile radius, all of whom were awoken in the middle of the night by the sudden cacophonous destruction inflicted on the elevated train tracks, the buildings along the train’s route, the cars on the snowy streets below, and the likely hundred of dead citizens who were squashed under the rubble, all due to Parker’s criminal genius train derailment robbery idea.

Forced to go back to the drawing board after they missed the majority of the treasure before it could leave town, Parker and his crew decide to go after the only piece still in town, the shipwreck's figurehead, which is worth $500 million. It is being kept in this ridiculous bank vault facility that is supposedly impossible to break into, but once they get there, doesn’t seem all that difficult. Then there’s a bunch of double-crossing and fake-outs and a car chase, and even though nobody gets paid, all the bad guys get their Just Desserts. This includes Zen. Did you think Parker forgot that she killed Philly?

He did not.

Then in the end, just when it might have seemed like they lost the big score, and that nobody got their big pay day, Parker reveals that he actually got away with the jewels, so now everyone is either happy and rich, or dead.

The only good thing about this terrible god damn film is that it makes it clear that anyone involved with bitcoin is a stupid douchebag. Also, Mark Cuban is too, but just for general reasons, not specifically because of bitcoin, but probably because of that too, because he’s exactly the kind of dumb asshole who would be involved with that kind of dumb shit.

Otherwise, Play Dirty feels like it was a vanity vehicle for Marky Mark to try to show the young fellas that he’s still got the juice, and he just… doesn’t. Between the violence that either kills or doesn’t hurt at all beyond the character having a slight stagger and a wince, and the quipping rejoinders that pose as dialogue, the whole thing is so try-hard, so out-of-step with the times. It‘s like the cinematic version of a dad deciding to school his kid in basketball, but then he ends up hurting himself. The whole thing felt like a network tv movie of an old action tv show having its 20 year reunion, the kind of show that starred a former primetime tv tough guy who wore turtlenecks and sports coats, your Hardcastle and McCormicks, the Rockford Files, or Spenser for Hire maybe, but now its paunchy old star is all beefed up with a bit of modern day slight nudity va-va-voom and maybe a little swearing, all in the hope that it might recapture a bit of that long ago lost spotlight, and maybe even get picked up for a series. The film even has classic American muscle cars in it like any old 80s tv show worth its salt. And all the while, everyone involved seems to be completely unaware of how dated it all is.

Dated, bad, and kind of sad.

Why isn’t Marky Mark making more movies with Guy Ritchie? Do they not like each other or something? Because judging by their current output, they seem like they’d be on each other’s level, and someone really needs to free Jason Stratham from Ritchie's ham-handed clutches.

Anyway, despite having such a large and well-known cast, Play Dirty is a poorly painted paint-by-numbers version of the dumbest, sloppiest heist movie cliches ever, with dull action and terrible CGI. People like to pretend that mega-franchises like Marvel have killed off all of these potentially brilliant independent films from visionary filmmakers, but Play Dirty is a reminder of the exact kind of overblown, over-hyped, poorly-executed “star vehicle” stinker that we actually used to get in the theatres every summer and holiday season, but which are now relegated to the quickly forgotten churn of the streaming services, exactly where they belong.

Big time pass. Forget this one even exists.