Recxpectations: Play Dirty

Shane Black’s latest movie is “Play Dirty” (New Thing #29), Hollywood’s latest attempt to make the fetchest of characters, Parker, into a thing. From what I can gather, Parker is pretty much a no nonsense master criminal, which is pretty generic and bland nowadays. But the Hollywood suits keep trying to make it work. (Not that there haven’t been some quality adaptations but they’ve either been decades ago or not done in America.) I’m forgoing my usual attempt at being objective because I really didn’t care for this one.

EXPECT: AN OVERLONG 80s ACTION TV SHOW
It’s kind of bizarre that the guy who kind of pushed action films forward with Lethal Weapon suddenly devolved into a throwaway actioner like this. This film pretty much brings nothing new to the table. The opening scene absolutely reminded me of 80s action shows. Then it shifted to kind of Uncharted until it settled into being as generic as one could imagine.

EXPECT: HORRIBLE CGI
I think the biggest mistake movies make with special effects is that they believe they can get away with bigger scenes than they can afford because they can just rely on CGI to carry the load. But, of course, they never really seem to take into consideration how much GOOD special effects cost and then you end up with something that looks like the rough draft of a video game cut scene. “Play Dirty” has multiple action scenes with horrible CGI. They should have instead rewritten the script and come up with some clever action set-ups that they could have afforded.

EXPECT: SHANE BLACK’S WORST
Shane Black isn’t without his misfires and I know that Predator fans will say that Shane Black’s take on that franchise is his biggest sin but, for me, this one was the most disappointing. And I say that as someone who went in with lower expectations. This is my second least favorite film of the year. Mark Wahlberg is in his muted “tough guy” mode. LaKeith Stanfield does what he can with the surprisingly lame material. It just feels like another director got a bag of money from a streamer and decided to fart out whatever came to mind.

I also have to add that nobody has bystanders killed for laughs like Shane Black does. He did it in Nice Guys (a film I love) and again here. This one isn’t as random as the two in Nice Guys but does seem unnecessary.