I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with guest anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about new movies in theatres including the sports drama “The Smashing Machine,” the action comedy “Play Dirty” and the documentary “Orwell 2+2=5.”
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 12:57)
I joined CTV NewsChannel to have a look at new movies coming to theatres including the sports drama “The Smashing Machine” and the action comedy “Play Dirty.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CP24 to talk about the sports drama “The Smashing Machine,” the action comedy “Play Dirty,” the Disney+ sports comedy “Chad Powers” and the Paramount+ Sylvester Stallone series “Tulsa King.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make the bed! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the sports drama “The Smashing Machine,” the action comedy “Play Dirty” and the documentary “Orwell 2+2=5.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including Dwayne Johnson in “The Smashing Machine,” the Prime Video action comedy “Play Dirty” and the timely political documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
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: 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.
Way back when Rick Astley was one of the biggest stars in the world Shane Black wrote the classic L.A.P.D. buddy action comedy “Lethal Weapon.” A mix of chemistry and quips it set the template, for better and for worse, for a generation of cop buddy flicks. Black is back, breathing the same air, as co-writer and director of “The Nice Guys,” a hardboiled comedy that places Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling amid the mayhem.
Set in smoggy 1970s era Los Angeles, the story revolves around an odd couple brought together by circumstance. Jackson Healy (Crowe) is the muscle. He’s a brass-knuckled enforcer who makes his money through intimidation and violence. Holland Marsh (Gosling) is a drunken private investigator so desperate he specializes in doing missing persons cases for dementia patients who have forgotten their loved ones are dead, not missing. He’s so inept even his own thirteen-year-old daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), refers to him as the world’s worst detective.
They are thrown together when March is hired to find Amelia (Margaret Qualley) but she hires Healy to get rid of the creep she thinks is a stalker. An uneasy alliance leads them head on into a wacky web of sleaze, corruption and catalytic converters. There’s a load more plot, but the point here isn’t the story as much as it is the journey it takes its characters on.
By rights “The Nice Guys” should be called “The Nice Guys and a Girl” because the teenage Angourie Rice is a key player. She’s an adolescent sidekick who, unlike Black’s child hanger-on in “Iron Man 3,” doesn’t have a precocious bone in her body. She’s funny, lends some heart to the cynicism on display and nearly steals the movie from the leads.
Nearly, but not completely. Crowe and Gosling bring seedy charm to their roles. They’re part “Freebie and the Bean,” part Abbott and Costello. Each hand in loose performances in a film that is unafraid to spend time listening to its leads bantering back and forth. Gosling excels with physical bits—trying to maintain his modesty in a bathroom stall scene is pure slapstick—while Crowe is more menacing but with solid comic timing.
Black’s way with a visual gag is also used to ample effect. An elevator scene that made me laugh in the trailers is played out with precision, escalating the laughs as the violence increases.
“The Nice Guys” is funny and even thrilling by times, but its greatest trick is to make you fall on side with these two not-always-so-nice-guys. They are neither particularly heroic nor gifted. Instead they are everymen looking for redemption and a fast paycheque. The ending sets things up for a sequel and that’s OK. I’d like to spend more time with these nice guys and girl.
