SYNOPSIS: In “Play Dirty,” a new action comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and LaKeith Stanfield, and now streaming on Prime Video, violent criminal Parker gets a chance at the score of a lifetime if he can outsmart, outlast and outwit a South American dictator, the world’s richest man and the New York mob.
CAST: Mark Wahlberg, LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Chukwudi Iwuji, Nat Wolff, Thomas Jane, Tony Shalhoub. Directed by Shane Black.
REVIEW: Based on the hard-boiled novels by Donald E. Westlake, writing under the name Richard Stark, “Play Dirty” is an overblown throwback to the action comedies of the 1980s and 1990s.
Director Shane Black opens the movie with a wild and wooly action scene that sees expert thief Parker, the movie’s antihero lead played by a strangely unengaged Mark Wahlberg, as part of a violent bank heist gone wrong. The resulting car chase, that sees the good guys and bad guys careening through a horserace, is nutso and sets the over-the-top tone of what is to follow.
The convoluted story then focuses on Parker, and his gang, which includes, freedom fighter Zen (Rosa Salazar), a South American criminal who instigates the theft of one of her country’s national treasures to bankroll a revolution that will topple her government, Grofield (LaKeith Stanfield), a criminal with dreams of being an actor and scammers Ed and Brenda Mackey (Keegan-Michael Key and Claire Lovering).
Their complicated plan to steal a giant statue takes up most of the overlong two-hour runtime, but the fun isn’t in the heist, it’s in the characters. Black, who cowrote the script with Charles Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi, has a knack for creating antiheroes with pizazz. Standouts include Stanfield, who easily steals scenes from Wahlberg, Salazar as a femme fatale with a way with a funny line and a weapon, and Nat Wolff, whose character Kincaid takes a licking but keeps on ticking.
They all hand in work that feels like they understand that the absurd nature of Black’s big set pieces and the film’s callous disregard for human life is cartoony in nature. It’s Wahlberg who doesn’t appear to be in on the joke. Parker is a hardened criminal, an unrepentant killer and thief, who only seems to come alive when he is un-aliving someone, which is a lot of the time, but not enough to animate the character.
“Play Dirty” has some of the trademark Shane Black verve. His best work is characterized by odd-couple dynamics, flawed leads, sharp dialogue and twisty-turny plots. He helped define the late 1980s action-comedy genre with the scripts for the “Lethal Weapon” franchise, and his underrated “The Nice Guys” is a near perfect buddy flick.
“Play Dirty” doesn’t stand up by comparison to those films—it’s mostly as generic as its title—but it has enough direct to streaming energy and charm to be earn a watch.
SYNOPSIS: “Orwell: 2+2=5,” a new documentary now playing in theatres from BAFTA-winning director Raoul Peck, is an in-depth look at how the personal experiences of iconoclastic writer George Orwell influenced his work, most notably his dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Linking the personal with the political, Peck provides an unnerving, look at Orwell’s ideas, which feel as timely now as they did when he wrote his most famous work seventy-five years ago. “If you want a vision of the future Winston,” O’Brien says to protagonist Winston Smith in the book, “Imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
CAST: Narrated by Damian Lewis. Directed by Raoul Peck.
REVIEW: Analysis of Orwell’s works, primarily “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm” is nothing new, but in “Orwell: 2+2=5” Academy Award® nominated and BAFTA-winning director Raoul Peck digs deep, connecting the personal with the political, to weave together a fabric of agitprop that looks to history to provide a glimpse of the future.
The biographical element begins with Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair in what is now the state of Bihar in India, questioning imperialistic rule. Using Orwell’s own words from letters, books and essays and narrated by Damian Lewis, “Orwell: 2+2=5” is a portrait of political awakening.
Using vintage movie clips, newsreels and contemporary footage Peck draws parallels between Orwell’s ominous vision of a world controlled by Big Brother, the totalitarian leader who wields complete power, and various governments now operating around the world. The usual suspects are essayed, including Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni, Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump.
As Orwell’s moral and political opinions take root, the film toggles between his personal observations on injustice and vintage and contemporary footage of how the author’s ideas of “newspeak”—ie: Putin’s classification of warfare against Ukrainian citizens as a “special military operation”—“doublethink,” the holding of two contradictory beliefs simultaneously as truth, colonial exploitation, historical revisionism, media disinformation and, of course, the core value of personal freedom, are as relevant and provocative today as they were when “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was published in 1949.
Peck doesn’t back down from presenting confrontational images and ideas. His juxtaposition of the mass 1946 execution of Nazis by hanging in Ukraine butted up against the US Capitol melee on January 6, 2021 feels overwrought, but should, nonetheless, inspire conversation, which is, ultimately, Peck’s purpose in making the film.
A two-headed hydra of a documentary, “Orwell: 2+2=5” works as both a biography of Orwell and a look at how his political observations and lessons are chillingly revelatory today. The ideas in the film aren’t exactly new, but the timeliness of his political philosophy is chilling. It’s a slick plea for the awareness of how totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.
SYNOPSIS: The winner of the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” is the story of Noam Tibon a retired Israeli general who, on October 7, 2023, rescued his son Amir, daughter-in-law Gali and their children from a Hamas terrorist attack.
REVIEW: Using a collage of firsthand interviews with the main players, reenactments, security footage, traffic cams and horrifying Hamas livestreams “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” recreates retired general Noam Tibon’s race from Tel Aviv to the Nahal Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border to rescue family members under siege from a Hamas terror attack.
Told with pulse racing urgency, the film captures the confusion, panic and determination of parents on a life and death mission. Director Barry Avrich’s straightforward, step-by-step account takes one of the most infamous days of our time and places it in an intimate context.
As son Amir, daughter-in-law Miri and their children hide in a darkened panic room, with only texts to connect them to the outside world, Tibon, whose kids nicknamed him 9-1-1 for his ability to respond in almost any situation, and wife Gali make the dangerous 90-minute journey into a chaotic war zone. It’s harrowing, dangerous, and if this wasn’t real life, it could easily play like a Liam Neeson “special set of skills” movie.
A story of family, resilience and survival, this an emotional doc that raises a universal question, What would you do to save your family?
At a quick 90 minutes Avrich keeps the focus tight and mostly in real time.
He leaves politics, as much as possible, on the cutting room floor, but does wonder aloud why it took the IDF so long to respond to the Hamas attack. It’s a question that goes mostly unexplored, as do many of the external elements of the story. Viewers looking for geopolitical context or in-depth analysis of the conflict will be left wanting. Instead, “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” is a suspenseful character study; a snapshot of parent’s love for their family.
SYNOPSIS: In “Play Dirty,” a new action comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and LaKeith Stanfield, and now streaming on Prime Video, violent criminal Parker gets a chance at the score of a lifetime if he can outsmart, outlast and outwit a South American dictator, the world’s richest man and the New York mob.
