If any filmmaker was expected to revive the witty, adrenaline-filled heist genre, it was Shane Black. Known for The Nice Guys and Iron Man 3, he returns with Play Dirty, a movie that aims for a 90s-style action-comedy swagger but lands squarely between boredom and frustration.
Adapted from Donald E. Westlake’s novels, the film thrusts viewers into the morally gray world of Parker (Mark Wahlberg), a professional thief with strict ethics about who he targets.
The movie opens with a botched robbery that quickly sets off a chain of betrayals, bullets, and uneven banter. The key premise of robbing other robbers is ripe for clever twists, but instead delivers a muddled two-hour experience that feels both overstuffed and undercooked.
Viewers are dropped straight into gunfire and double-crosses, yet the excitement fades fast because nothing feels meaningful.
Every sequence races toward the next explosion without establishing why the stakes matter. Play Dirty never pauses long enough to let the audience care about who’s winning or losing; it just keeps moving in circles.
Mark Wahlberg as Parker: Cool but Emotionless
Wahlberg’s portrayal of Parker is the film’s biggest contradiction. On paper, he’s the kind of morally ambiguous antihero audiences love: sharp, reserved, and perpetually one step ahead.
In execution, he’s so emotionally neutral that he barely registers as a character. Wahlberg plays him as if surviving each scene is enough, never giving us a hint of what drives him besides vague loyalty to his crew and code.
Parker’s backstory, revealed late into the runtime, is supposed to add depth, but by then the audience’s patience has long evaporated. His near-expressionless delivery makes even dramatic revelations feel like throwaway lines.
Compared to his performances in The Departed or Lone Survivor, this version of Wahlberg feels disengaged, like he’s moving through the motions rather than drawing us into Parker’s psyche.
The film tries to use Parker’s stoicism as a symbol of “old-school cool,” but ends up confusing detachment with depth. Without emotional investment, his losses mean nothing, and his wins feel hollow.
Supporting Cast: Shining Performers Lost in the Shuffle
If there’s an area where Play Dirty shows potential, it’s the cast list. LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Tony Shalhoub, and Gretchen Mol all sign on to add spark, but most are stranded inside underwritten roles.
Rosa Salazar plays Zen, a mysterious thief who recruits Parker for the new billion-dollar job involving a stolen ancient artifact. She brings sharp energy to every line, making Zen both capable and intriguing.
Her chemistry with Wahlberg hints at something simmering beneath the surface, yet their partnership never develops fully. The script introduces her with flair, then leaves her story hanging without payoff.
LaKeith Stanfield manages to deliver the film’s best one-liners, injecting brief life into scenes that risk turning flat. His natural wit and dry humor stand out, providing glimpses of what Play Dirty could have been a fun, fast-talking ensemble heist comedy if Shane Black had leaned harder into his instincts for snappy dialogue.
As the syndicate leader Lozini, Tony Shalhoub adds flavor in short bursts, though his character remains a caricature of “corrupt mafia boss.” Keegan-Michael Key and Gretchen Mol provide fleeting emotion and charm, but both are limited by how little the screenplay gives them to do.
This imbalance exposes one of the film’s biggest issues: too many characters, not enough character writing. Each feels like a background sketch instead of a living person, leaving viewers with a sea of names and no attachment to any of them.
Style Without Soul: The Problem With Play Dirty
Visually, Play Dirty looks polished. The slick cinematography, glossy car chases, and neon-drenched nightlife scenes suggest a director who knows his way around action set pieces. However, underneath that clean exterior lies an emotional vacuum.
Play Dirty (Credit: Prime Video)
The pacing stumbles between high-octane moments and drawn-out scenes that mistake complexity for intelligence. The film seems proud of its twisting plotlines, double-crosses, secret alliances, and fake deaths, yet none of them carry emotional weight. At times, the story feels like it’s parodying heist films rather than participating in one.
The humor that once defined Shane Black’s best works is strangely muted here. Occasional quips land, especially from Stanfield, but they vanish amidst overlong stretches of exposition and awkward tonal shifts. The jokes don’t clash with the action; they simply fade into it.
Even the action sequences, though competently shot, lack imaginative punch. Every chase feels familiar, every shootout predictable. The commentary on greed and loyalty that usually anchors heist stories is absent. There’s energy, but no purpose propelling that energy forward.
The Heist Formula That Lost Its Heart
What made earlier films by Shane Black memorable was his ability to blend grit with humanity. The Nice Guys worked because its characters bumbled through danger with real emotions underneath their bravado. Play Dirty misses that heartbeat.
The death of a crew member early in the movie should drive the rest of the plot, but nobody, not even Parke, seems deeply affected. A tearful scene from Gretchen Mol provides fleeting gravity but is quickly buried under another round of gunfire. Every emotional opportunity gets rushed or overlooked, leaving nothing genuine to cling to.
By the time the film reaches its third act, where the billion-dollar artifact finally comes into play, the momentum is gone. The final heist attempts to combine clever gadgetry with chaos, but it collapses into noise. There’s no suspense in watching characters you barely know risk their lives for motives you barely understand.
What hurts most is that there’s a glimmer of a truly engaging film within Play Dirty. A smaller focus, tighter script, and stronger character arcs might have turned it into a charismatic throwback. Instead, it feels stuck between wanting to be stylish and wanting to be substantial, achieving neither.
A Stylish Misfire From a Talented Director
No one can accuse Shane Black of lacking flair. He’s always embraced complicated plots and morally flawed antiheroes. Yet here, the self-awareness that once made his work fresh has transformed into detachment.
Play Dirty feels like watching a director trying to imitate his own formula, right down to the wisecracks and shootouts.
The movie’s attempts at emotional resonance fall as flat as its humor. It’s not bad in a technical sense, the pacing remains steady, the editing clean, but Play Dirty is starved of life. It’s a film designed to look like it’s having fun without ever letting the audience share in that fun.
Where The Nice Guys oozed chemistry and chaos in equal measure, Play Dirty feels mechanical. It’s a reminder that tone, no matter how sleek, can’t compensate for a missing heart.
Stylish but hollow, Play Dirty wants to be clever without committing to charm. Its central idea of a professional thief robbing the robbers has strong potential, but the muddled execution, thin character arcs, and lack of humor make it tough to enjoy.
Mark Wahlberg leads a talented ensemble that never gets the material they deserve, stuck in a movie that should have been brisk and thrilling but ends up long and joyless. By the time the final credits roll, viewers are left wondering where all the fun went.
So while it may sparkle on the surface, Play Dirty ultimately proves that polish can’t replace pulse.
Now and then, a film comes along that turns Hollywood’s obsession with beauty into its own monster. Shell, directed by Max Minghella, attempts exactly that: a glossy look at the cost of staying youthful in an industry that treats age like a disease.
Elisabeth Moss leads this horror comedy as Samantha Lake, a fading actress desperate to reclaim her glow, her fame, and perhaps her soul.
At first, Samantha seems like many aging performers we’ve seen across film history: talented but discarded, watching younger stars run off with the attention she once commanded.
When she meets Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson), a wellness mogul offering the ultimate anti-aging treatment through her company, also called Shell, transformation comes quickly. Overnight, Samantha becomes radiant again, drawing media praise and the interest of casting directors who had forgotten her name.
But from the very moment her skin begins to glow, something beneath it starts to rot.
Elisabeth Moss Brings Humanity to Synthetic Perfection
Few performers capture inner unraveling as convincingly as Elisabeth Moss. As Samantha, she plays fragility masked by endless poise.
Her face carries exhaustion hidden under camera-ready smiles, and her voice trembles even when she pretends confidence. Moss manages to balance self-awareness and delusion so finely that audiences both sympathize and recoil.
What makes her performance so magnetic is how it continuously shifts. In one moment, she’s vulnerable, practically begging the camera to love her again. In the next scene, she’s terrifying, her charm replaced by quiet menace.
The movie uses mirrors and screens obsessively, watching her as she watches herself, creating an eerie feedback loop between fame and self-destruction.
This duality echoes the film’s visual style. Minghella and his cinematographer give Los Angeles a shimmering, retro-futuristic glow. Every surface glints like a diamond, every corridor feels plastically perfect, suggesting the uncanny vibe of a city rebuilt by beauty clinics.
Yet behind this sheen, something impure lurks. Moss thrives in that space between adoration and disgust, confirming that few actors can blend horror and pathos as effectively.
Kate Hudson’s Dual Nature: Glamour and Menace
Kate Hudson steals scenes as Zoe Shannon, whose calm smile hides predatory intent. Her company, Shell, markets itself as the modern revolution of wellness, promising regeneration beyond science. Hudson’s performance glides between maternal warmth and frightening supremacy.
She’s the embodiment of every influencer who swears her products come from “self-care,” while silently counting the profit margins behind them.
Zoe’s charisma feels addictive, her control subtle but complete. When she speaks, even her pauses sound rehearsed. Watching Moss and Hudson together is like witnessing a power exchange in slow motion; Samantha starts as a client and ends as a possession.
Hudson’s approach plays into the broader theme of women betraying women under the pressure of survival in a beauty-driven world.
The film hints that Zoe might have been like Samantha once, seduced and devoured by the same system she now controls. That tragic loop embodies Shell’s core idea: the cycle of fear that industries feed to keep people buying youth.
A Satirical Mirror Held to Hollywood
Minghella’s direction brims with visual confidence. The production design oozes irony, pastel fitness centers, chrome therapy booths, and magazine offices where no one eats but everyone smiles. Los Angeles becomes a reflection maze, a candy-colored hell decorated like a skincare ad.
Shell (Credit: Dark Castle Entertainment)
The satire cuts deep in several sequences. One features Samantha in a live-streamed wellness ritual surrounded by adoring followers chanting slogans about “self-love,” even as something sinister slithers beneath her rejuvenated skin.
Another shows younger influencers whispering about her “return” as if reinvention were a sport. Each moment mocks the absurd blend of spirituality and capitalism that defines modern self-improvement culture.
Where Shell succeeds is in highlighting how ordinary vanity turns monstrous through relentless repetition. It’s not the body horror that horrifies most; it’s the idea that losing youth means losing worth. The film uses its glowing sci-fi aesthetic to emphasize the emptiness hiding inside every beauty regimen promising renewal.
When Satire Doesn’t Cut Deep Enough
The biggest issue with Shell lies in its hesitation. The film begins with bold imagery, a violent opening sequence featuring Elizabeth Berkley that sets expectations for gruesome terror. Yet, somewhere between its first and final acts, the film grows timid. Instead of committing to true horror, it drifts toward comedy.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this tonal blend; horror-comedy can expose societal truths brilliantly. The problem comes when the movie tries to shift moods too abruptly.
After hours of build-up, the eventual descent into body horror feels brief and softened, as though the camera turns away right when things get interesting. It’s as if Minghella was crafting an R-rated satire but pulled back for wider mainstream appeal.
That hesitation doesn’t ruin the movie, but it keeps it from greatness. Viewers sense the potential for something darker and more profound, a chance to explore physical mutation as a metaphor for fame’s decay. Instead, the narrative plays it safe, preferring irony over intensity.
Strong Cast, Strong Concept, Uneven Execution
Despite its narrative limitations, Shell boasts an irresistible rhythm, helped by its impressive supporting cast. Kaia Gerber delivers a sharp secondary role as an influencer who idolizes Zoe’s empire without realizing she’s next in line for exploitation.
Arian Moayed and Amy Landecker add brief but memorable moments as cynical industry players who treat bodily maintenance like a business pitch.
The cameos by Este Haim and Ziwe inject bursts of satirical wit. Haim’s portrayal of Samantha’s bumbling assistant adds humor amid tension, while Ziwe’s ruthless media executive turns corporate coldness into pure art. Together, these side characters capture Hollywood’s hollow chatter perfectly: everyone is selling something, even their fear.
Tonally, some scenes sparkle with satirical brilliance, while others meander in search of direction. The pacing slackens mid-film as the story tries to choose between being a horror satire or a wellness-world parody. Still, when Shell hits the right notes, it’s a magnetic, surreal mix of glamour, irony, and existential dread.
Beauty, Decay, and the Price of Perfection
By the time Shell reaches its finale, its central mystery, what Zoe’s company truly does to its clients, emerges in full grotesque color.
The climactic transformation delivers a body horror spectacle but also emotional emptiness. It’s stylish, chaotic, and appropriately shocking, yet it feels fleeting. Still, the final image of a once-beautiful star turned literal product gives the movie its lasting sting.
Moss’s final scenes encapsulate what Shell tries to say about modern womanhood and celebrity: perfection is a prison dressed as freedom. Every smile hides desperation, every flawless surface conceals suffering. Through her tragedy, the film gestures toward something powerful, even if it never fully arrives.
Max Minghella deserves credit for ambition. Few directors attempt horror about vanity without resorting to cheap caricature, and his visual storytelling brims with intent. But Shell ultimately stops where it should soar, too cautious to embrace the horror it teases.
Shell is gorgeous, smartly performed, and biting in its critique of youth-obsessed culture. Yet, much like the industry it portrays, it promises transformation without delivering full depth. The film’s beauty and its message about self-destruction shimmer on the surface but rarely penetrate emotionally.
Elisabeth Moss and Kate Hudson make it worth watching, two actresses portraying a desperate transformation within a system designed to consume them. Their performances give Shell its pulse, even when the plot falters.
A satire sharper than most Hollywood thrillers, Shell succeeds as a mirror to vanity culture, even if its reflection feels just slightly too polished.
