How “Play Dirty” Did Richard Stark’s Parker Dirty

I swear I never set out to write so much about Parker, the iconic thief who stomped his way through a whole bunch of Donald Westlake Richard Stark novels over the course of forty-odd years. Looking back, though, I realize I’ve written at least three essays about Parker for CrimeReads, along with various mentions in this column, in the Film Noir Foundation’s magazine, and so on.

In any case, oops, I’m about to do it again, because I just sat through Shane Black’s “Play Dirty,” which rips Parker from the original novels and plants him amidst an all-new plot involving a South American dictatorship and the New York mob. In grand Shane Black tradition, there are quips and dozens of people dying in car chases and gunfights and, uh, Mark Wahlberg as Parker…

[Pauses to thump head softly on desk.]

I’m not here to reflexively bury Shane Black—you’ll find no bigger fan of “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” or “The Nice Guys,” his previous crime films. He’s the best in the business at writing characters who are simultaneously funny but also filled with piercing regrets. All of his protagonists might as well walk around with T-shirts stating, “I’m Highly Neurotic and I Have a Gun in My Pocket.”

But I’m not here to fully praise Black, either, considering that Parker is closer to a machine or a shark than a man, and this movie totally undermines that characterization. Throughout the novels, Parker displays virtually no regret as he kills nearly everyone who stands between him and whatever he wants. He does not joke. He does not contemplate. He rarely screws up—and when he does, he fixes the situation with murderous aplomb.

Every actor who previously played Parker in a cinematic adaptation—Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall, Mel Gibson, Jason Statham—understood the assignment, often limiting the humor to Parker taking things a bit too literally. In theory, Wahlberg could also do that (he’s a far better actor than many people give him credit for), but he decides to spend “Play Dirty” as the typical Wahlberg Action Hero: exasperated, meathead funny, ‘tough’ in the manner of a nightclub blowhard who hits 2 AM only to realize he’s leaving alone. Parker in name only, in other words.

This isn’t the first time that Wahlberg has taken a beloved and popular crime-fiction protagonist and squished them into his mold. A few years ago, he starred in “Spenser Confidential,” which transforms Spenser, the detective from the Robert B. Parker novels, into yet another Wahlberg Action Hero. I appreciate Spenser as a character, although I have no special love for him, and I remember being mildly bemused as Spencer aficionados treated the movie as a high crime against art, worthy of a B-2 bombing run against Netflix headquarters; of course, now that my own beloved noir character is under assault by Marky Mark, I can’t help but feel a little rueful about my former position.

If you have a prized pulp anti-hero who starred in a series of novels in the 20th century, there’s a nonzero chance that Wahlberg is coming for them, too. I’m not quite sure what’s behind it. Maybe pulp is just the next geological layer in the studios’ endless intellectual-property strip-mining. Maybe someone told Wahlberg that he really needs a series character to call his own, his equivalent of an Indiana Jones or John McClane that he can return to whenever he needs to top off his revenues, and he or his agents decided that the old paperbacks were the perfect place to look, especially since many a dead detective writer’s estate will cough up the movie rights for $11.50 and a pinkie swear for an invite to the premiere.

(Just wait, next Wahlberg is gonna adapt the Continental Op, but instead of clearing out seedy little towns during Prohibition, he’s gonna crack dumbass jokes while curb-stomping a suspect in the pahking lot behind the Dunkin.)

Whatever the reason, we’re stuck with this trend, and I’m telling myself that at least a new Shane Black movie is better than no Shane Black movie at all. But I also can’t help but think of what might have been: long before this trailer came out, news circulated that Robert Downey Jr. was considering the Parker role.

Now that would have been something: motormouthed RDJ playing against type as a ruthless, almost monosyllabic thief? The audience might have found that disconcerting enough to be genuinely terrifying. Alas, any plans in that direction were deep-sixed by Marvel Studios, which drove a fleet of dump trucks loaded with $100 bills to Downey Jr.’s house, all to convince him (successfully) to save their flailing brand by playing Dr. Doom. They won that bidding war, but we might have collectively lost out.

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Nick Kolakowski is the author of several crime novels, including “Where the Bones Lie”, “Payback is Forever”, „Maxine Unleashes Doomsday“ and „Boise Longpig Hunting Club“ as well as the Love & Bullets trilogy of novellas. His work has been nominated for the Anthony and Derringer awards, and his short story “Scorpions” appeared in The Best Mystery and Suspense 2024. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Mystery Weekly, Shotgun Honey, Rock and a Hard Place Press, and more.

Just out: RIGHTEOUS TRASH, the third book in what is called the Boise Noir Trilogy. Rock and a Hard Place Press did a masterful job on the cover (as they did with the reissued editions of the first two books in the trilogy, BOISE LONGPIG HUNTING CLUB and RATTLESNAKE RODEO).

RIGHTEOUS TRASH follows Jake, an Iraq War veteran and former bounty hunter, and his gun-running sister Frankie as they try to dig themselves out of a big financial hole the only way they know how—by doing something incredibly insane and possibly deadly. »This time around, the action isn’t restricted to Idaho; there’s also a sequence set in New Orleans that’s a.) based on a real-life incident, if you can believe it, and b.) one of the funnier things I’ve written. The book’s centerpiece is also the craziest robbery I could think of—I had a lot of fun orchestrating that bit of chaos.«

His „Payback is Forever“ (Shotgun Honey 2022) is inspired clearly by the novels of Richard Stark. Our review here (in German). – See also his Hell of a Mess. A Love & Bullets Hookup.

Nick Kolakowski, geboren 1980, aufgewachsen in Washington. D.C., hat Geschichte in Chicago studiert. Er schreibt Romane, Kurzgeschichten, Lyrik und Essays, viele davon über Crime Fiction und verwandte Themen. Seine Texte erscheinen u. a. in der Washington Post, in Shotgun Honey, North American Review, The Evergreen Review, Rust & Months. Kolakowski lebt in New York City. Eine Besprechung des von Parker inspirierten „Payback is Forever“ in unseren Bloody Chops.

Bei Suhrkamp auf Deutsch: Love & Bullets.
His essays with us. 

His website nickkolakowski.com

His column „Smoking Gun“ with us: 
‘Salem’s Lot’ and the Horror of a Stephen King Adaptation
(27) „Rebel Ridge“: Calmly Burn the Whole Thing Down
‘Monsieur Spade’ and the Faustian Bargain
John Woo is Remaking ‘The Killer.’ But Why?
The Newest ‘Ripley’ Series is Stunning and Flawed
‘Sugar’: Not the Neo-Noir Revival We Need
(3) Moral Redemption in Noir: Is It Possible?
(4) What Makes Jack Reacher Tick?
(5) ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Tries to Make the Familiar into Something New
(6) Is David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ a Comedy? 
(7) Rewatching ‘Drive’: Gosling as Noir’s Apex Predator
(8) Elmore Leonard  – City Primeval
(9) Cormac McCarthy Used Crime Fiction’s Tropes to Make Masterpieces
(10) Parker: Donald Westlake’s One Amazing Trick
(11) Cosby, Winslow, Pruitt: Three Heavy-Hitting Thillers for Summer
(12) Weed-Based Crime Thrillers are Going Up in Smoke
(13) ‘The Last of Us’: Crime in the Post-Apocalypse 
(14) What Made “Glass Onion” and “Knives Out” So Popular?
(15) Jordan Harper’s One-Two Punch of Crime Fiction Deserves a Wide Audience
(16) ‘True Detective’ Season 2: Was It Better Than We All Thought?
(17) From ‘Touch of Evil’ to ‘True Detective,’ Long Shots are Crime Films’ Secret Weapon
(18) Michael Mann, again: What Michael Mann Teaches Us About Enduring Crime Fiction
(19) „Heat 2“ – How Do You Craft a Sequel to a Masterpiece?
(20) 4 Ways Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” Novel Stands Out From the Film.
(21) On „Heat“: Manhunter Takes Down Thief: How Michael Mann’s Early Career Led to ‘Heat’
(22) The Most Honest Nihilism – on „The Way of the Gun“
(23) No, Time to Die – The latest James Bond movie digs into the fatalism at the iconic spy’s core.
(24) Cormac McCarthy’s Overlooked Masterpiece? – „The Councelor“
(25) „Nightmare Alley“ – How Guillermo del Toro’s Film Alters a Masterpiece Noir Novel
(26) David Cronenberg – The Carnal Crime of “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises”
(27) With Parker, Donald E. Westlake Pulled Off Crime Fiction’s Most Spectacular Magic Trick
(28) Guy Ritchie’s Return to Crime Films is Worth Watching
(29) Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’: Hint of Things to Come?
(30) David Lynch and the Beautiful Weirdness
(31) ‘Where the Bones Lie’ and the Engine of California Noir
(32) “Den of Thieves 2”: Stealing from the Best
(33) White Lotus and the Gentle Art of Hating Your Protagonists
(34) Neal Stephenson
(35) Where is Storytelling Going?
(36) ‚She Rides Shotgun‘ and the Making of Legends
(37) Jack Bauer, ‘24’ and the Great Memory-Hole