Man, this new straight-to-Amazon-Prime movie PLAY DIRTY is some kind of monkey’s paw shit for me. It’s the great Shane Black (THE NICE GUYS) writing and directing for the first time in seven years, returning to crime movies for the first time in nine years, and it’s based on my favorite crime series ever, Richard Stark’s Parker books. The catch is that most of what I want from a Shane Black movie (such as the quippy dialogue) I definitely do not want in a Parker adaptation, and they originally had Robert Downey, Jr. cast in the role, which seemed like a problem. Could he really seem intimidating enough to be Parker, and more importantly would he even know how to shut the fuck up with his little smart ass comments? I didn’t think he would.

But I wish I could’ve found out, because Downey got replaced with Mark Wahlberg (PLANET OF THE APES), also a poor fit but in a less intriguing way. Downey is a totally different type than the character, while Wahlberg sorta aspires to being the right type, he just doesn’t have enough of it. I know people dislike him now due to past crimes, dumbass interviews and lowered quality standards, but I’m too old to entirely let go – I haven’t forgotten that exciting alchemy of the most uncool pop rapper of the ‘90s winning us over with a great performance in BOOGIE NIGHTS, nor have I forsaken THE BIG HIT, THREE KINGS, I HEART HUCKABEES, THE DEPARTED, THE OTHER GUYS, THE FIGHTER, etc. So it’s not Marky Markophobia when I say he doesn’t seem believably cunning enough, or intimidating enough. The other characters have to treat him as if he is, but I don’t quite buy it. I don’t feel it. I don’t feel the vibrations.

I appreciate the effort, though. For the majority of the movie Wahlberg grimaces and brow-furls and sometimes even wears suits like Lee Marvin, staying somewhat true to the serious professional who can be absolutely ruthless but, he explains, won’t necessarily go around killing people when it would bring too much attention. But Black surrounds him with his enjoyably quirky characters, gives them goofy things to talk about, and also if he thinks of a funny thing for Parker to say, or a thing he can do that violates his stated code but gets a chuckle, he doesn’t have the discipline not to use it. So I’d say this is the first Parker movie that’s straight up an action comedy.

Even the definitive Parker film POINT BLANK humanized the character a little, gave him some emotions, I’m used to that. They also make him do some very Parker-like things. I winced when he gave a bundle of cash to a bystander, and sighed with relief when another character pointed out that it would keep her quiet when questioned by police. Yes, Parker would do that, if that was his reasoning.

He also follows his literary counterpart’s rule of abstaining from sex or romance during a job. When tits are flashed his way he doesn’t get a boner, he gets suspicious. In that area Black has outclassed many of the other adapters, so he’s got my respect, but late in the game he commits one of the most egregious sins of any Parker movie when – I say this with a heavy heart – Parker tells a lady a childhood origin story of how he became a criminal and got his philosophy of life. I assume Black gets Parker, knows why that sort of self reflection is in violent opposition to everything that makes the character special, so this must be a conscious decision to prioritize making a normal movie about normal bullshit over being true to the character. All the more reason to have called it PLAY DIRTY, starring Mark Wahlberg as Packer, based on no character, from no books, by nobody.

These are, of course, my hang ups, as a weirdo incapable of mentally separating this particular movie from its source material. And I’ve been through this before, most recently in 2013’s not very good PARKER starring Jason Statham. This one’s different in that the script by Black & Charles Mondry (ROAD HOUSE 2024) & Anthony Bagarozzi (THE NICE GUYS) is not even based on a specific Parker book, it’s their stab at a Stark-like heist of their own invention. But it is specifically set in “The Violent World of Parker.” LaKeith Stanfield (THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB) plays Grofield, a reoccurring book character who joins in many of Parker’s heists to fund his life as a theater actor. (He even has two spinoff books.) Their crew includes Ed Mackey (Keegan-Michael Key, WONKA) and his girlfriend Brenda (Claire Lovering, SAN ANDREAS), characters from several books starting with Plunder Squad, as well as Stan Devers (Chai Hansen) from The Green Eagle Score, Plunder Squad and Butcher’s Moon. And I might be wrong but I think the guy the say made them a special snow vehicle is the guy who souped up some cars in The Outfit.

The story also involves The Outfit, the corporately structured mob that Parker often goes up against in the books, and a major plot point is him being banned from New York for having robbed them. They’re now led by Lozini (Tony Shalhoub, THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE), which was the name of a mob boss in Butcher’s Moon. Also Parker uses the alias Charles Willis, which lasted him most of the series. So, it’s not the Parker I want but there are too many details from the books for me to forget what it’s supposed to be.

It opens with a heist at a horse race track that goes awry when a random dude tries to steal the money from them, and then when getaway driver Zen (ALITA BATTLE ANGEL herself Rosa Salazar) betrays them. Regular Parker shit, and he promises his dead partner’s widow (Gretchen Mol, GET CARTER, 3:10 TO YUMA) that he’ll get her share and kill Zen for her. But when he finds Zen she drags him into a larger heist she was trying to get seed money for, stealing an ancient treasure that the corrupt president of Fictional South American Country has hired The Outfit to steal.

LIke any Parker book or heist movie there’s lots of questioning and fighting different guys, making different plans, having the plans go wrong and coming up with backups on the fly. More like a different type of movie than a Parker movie, these activities often explode into big action spectacle. They purposely crash a train, get into big shootouts and chases with flipping cars, even FAST & FURIOUS style high speed vehicle hopping. The digital FX are definitely not at a theatrical (or Michael Bay streaming) level of quality but there is some imaginative mayhem, like when the opening heist bleeds onto the race track and there are horses running over cars and vice versa.

Stark’s books have a sense of humor to them, but not really jokes. This has many jokes, and I did laugh at many of them, for what it’s worth. Tonally it’s more Black than Stark, which will be okay for non-devotees, but it’s a new problem for Parker adaptations. The score by Alan Silvestri (BACK TO THE FUTURE) contributes to the wacky feel and sometimes veers too far into WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT for this material. At other times I liked how straight up retro corny sounding it’s willing to go.

I wonder if all this cute-ifying might backfire with normal people, though, because when Movie Parker Who Got This Way When He Was a Child resolves the story’s most dramatic conflict in a particularly cold-hearted way even I thought shit, Parker. That’s fucked up, man. Might be too much of a bummer for people who were on board for light entertainment.

Thomas Jane (STANDER) is great as a member of the crew on the race track job, and of course I started picturing what it would be like with him as Parker. But I get it, Jane would not sell as many tickets as Wahlberg so you gotta— wait a minute, they didn’t sell tickets to this anyway, why the fuck do they care? What the fuck is wrong with these billionaires, inventing a fake business model where they dump hundreds of millions into movies that make the same amount whether they’re watched by the entire population of earth or zero people, and then they still insist on making compromises for imaginary commercial considerations? These people have no imagination, no soul, no life.

(Speaking of which, there is a sucky billionaire character in this and WEIRD CAMEO SPOILER he’s introduced having dinner with Mark Cuban, who Parker shoots. Yes, I laughed at the craziness of it but also it’s such a sad “see, he has a sense of humor, billionaires are people too!” move. Elon Musk Hosting SNL Syndrome.)

My nerdiest fan question, but also my best, is why Black & Co. didn’t follow the cool structure that Westlake/Stark used for most of the books. They’re divided into four sections, and at the end of the second section Parker gets betrayed or caught or something and then the third section skips back and takes on the p.o.v. of one of the supporting characters (usually someone we didn’t know was up to something) to show us what was really going on, leading up to Parker’s current dilemma. I took inspiration from that in my horror book so you bet your ass I’d want to do it if I was trying to make up an official Parker story. Oh well. I’m sure he has a reason.

Partly because of that structure I’ve felt for years now that the way to adapt Parker would be as a TV series with one book per season. In fact Amazon now do that really well with Reacher, and they specialize in making shows based on book series characters like Jack Ryan, Alex Cross and Whoever Bosch, so it’s kinda funny that they’d waste Parker on this. But PLAY DIRTY has more style to it than a show would, and even if it’s Black’s worst or second worst movie (I don’t hate THE PREDATOR as much as the rest of society) it’s probly better than some of the streamer dump movies if you’re not hung up on the books like I am. And let’s face it, you probly aren’t. Here’s hoping it does well enough (whatever that means for a movie that doesn’t have to do anything) that Black gets to make another movie soon, but bad enough that it’s not another Parker movie.