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Right around the time that Netflix changed the game by creating its own original movies, and then inspired other streamers to do the same, Shane Black released his last great action comedy The Nice Guys on the big screen. It was one of the writer-director’s best, as exciting as it was amusing, but the ecosystem had changed since his 90s heyday, and a wide audience didn’t materialise, the film one of the year’s more frustratingly underseen flops.
In the years since, the big, star-led action comedy has become streaming bread and butter, most weeks cursed by another limp, murkily shot attempt to recall the joys of Black’s greatest hits, films such as The Last Boy Scout, Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight. At the same time, as audiences yawned through chemistry-free, shoddily made romps like Ghosted, Back in Action and Role Play, The Nice Guys started to gain a re-appreciation, frequently mentioned online as one of the best films people might not have seen. It didn’t feel like a coincidence, every poorly choreographed action set piece and groan-worthy one-liner making Black’s effortless work seem that much more impressive, something he made look easy proving impossibly hard for those that followed.
His return to the genre (2018’s The Predator had elements of both but was primarily sci-fi) marks Black’s first streaming movie, Play Dirty, heading to Amazon. It’s a far cry from his best but it’s markedly better than what we’ve been stuck with as of late and what will be filed next to it on Prime, a breezy reminder of how well Black can balance both action and comedy, a film of genuine personality in a sea of blandness. It’s the season’s other Donald E Westlake adaptation, existing at the opposite end of the spectrum to Park Chan-wook’s Oscar-tipped, critically adored dark comedy No Other Choice (this year also saw Westlake’s Memory turned into the little-seen André Holland-led mystery, The Actor). The source novel, The Hunter, has previously inspired both 1967’s Point Blank and 1999’s Payback, and introduced the character of Parker, who has also been played by Peter Coyote, Robert Duvall and Jason Statham.
It’s now the turn of Mark Wahlberg, an actor who has been partly responsible for some of the streaming action comedy era’s very worst, from The Union to The Family Plan to the heinous Spenser Confidential, a truly wretched evening-ruiner that sank the genre to unprecedented new lows (I’d argue that even the loosest involvement in that film should bar someone from working in the genre again but alas). In a wild, attention-grabbing cold open that should come with a trigger warning for horse-lovers, he’s betrayed after a big job, left for dead by Rosa Salazar’s backstabbing thief, Zen. He is, as one would expect from the genre, hell-bent on revenge, but after finding her, she offers him a way to make things right, a new score that would bring him more money than he’s ever stolen before. He’s pulled into an uneasy alliance, softened by her claims that her actions were for “the greater good” AKA helping to untopple a dictator that has her homeland in his grip. The heist is as absurdly elaborate as they come and so Parker recruits his old team, including Keegan Michael-Key, Australian actors Chai Hansen and Claire Lovering, and LaKeith Stanfield’s failing thespian, Grofield. Oh and, because it’s a Shane Black movie, it’s Christmas too.
The film was originally supposed to reunite Black with Robert Downey Jr, the pair making for a fine duo in 2005’s wonderful Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and 2013’s franchise-boosting Iron Man 3, but he retreated to a producer role, leaving Wahlberg to take his place, a considerable downgrade given what’s required from the character. Black does bring out more from him than most directors have for the past decade or so but he can’t quite nail the character’s dry sardonic wit, more at home with action than comedy (Stanfield, the far more talented comedic actor, is the standout). In what often feels like a choice to nudge the film toward a green light, Black has peppered his snarky crime noir with blockbuster-sized action set pieces which are at times giddily, Mission: Impossible-level outrageous, and at others a bit rubbishy to look at, grand ambition tempered by cheap-looking visual effects (the Australia-shot film trying to fool us with a New York setting is equally distracting).
A major complaint about the action-comedy genre as it stands is a total lack of the latter, hopelessly unfunny scripts in dire need of a sitcom writer to add some life. Black has no such issue, his writing here rhythmic and thoughtful, packed with specific detail and brilliantly timed humour, someone constantly finding ways to stuff more into scenes that would have otherwise been left plain and perfunctory in the hands of others. His “more is more” approach can often leave us a tad overwhelmed, though, his propulsive yet overly convoluted plot in need of a decluttering, as if he was worried he wouldn’t get to make another Parker film and so stuffed two films into one. I hope that’s not the case, though, as Play Dirty makes for the kind of entertainingly sweet and sour cocktail (the finale is both cold yet deserving) that I would happily get drunk on again.
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Play Dirty is now out on Amazon Prime Video
