Mark Wahlberg has been a busy chap in recent months and years. His second new movie of 2025, Play Dirty, has just released on Amazon Prime Video for all to see – but IMDB states he’s got heaps more coming soon.
The R-rated flick is directed by Shane Black, well known for 2016’s The Nice Guys and 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Play Dirty plays with familiar ground, leveraging Wahlberg and co-star LaKeith Stanfield.
It’s yet another reason why Prime Video is up there among the best streaming services, as it continues to deliver quality new productions. Amazon’s not all about Big Deal Days sales, after all.
Although, technically, the movie is an MGM production – which Amazon also owns – so I’m sure it’ll be behind MGM+ in the future, which is all the more reason to watch it now,.
Play Dirty trailer
Play Dirty is about a professional thief, Parker (Wahlberg), on the biggest job of his career. He assembles his crew, including Grofield (Stanfield) and Zen (Rosa Salazar), which comes at odds with the New York mob.
What’s Play Dirty about?
As the trailer shows plainly, expect lots of gun-toting scenes, car crashes, and videogame-like mayhem throughout. All painted with Black’s slight tongue-in-cheek brush, allowing some comedy amongst the action.
The movie has been called ‘stylish’ in critics reviews, a nod to Black’s style and long-standing Hollywood career, but also the production quality and crew behind the movie. It might have gone straight to streaming, but Wahlberg’s latest is every bit A-list.
Is Play Dirty a success?
Image 1 of 5
Except, that is, for the reviews. Play Dirty hasn’t roused the most inspiring of reviews, with the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score sat on a lowly 46% – with audience figures even lower, at 43%.
Why such a reception? Too long, too repetitive, too obvious are the general complaints. Black has quite the legacy to live up to, but movies that are decades old simply sit in a different time that doesn’t translate quite the same in today’s complex action-drama-comedyscape.
None of this has stopped it from rocketing up the Amazon Prime Video charts, of course, where in the UK Play Dirty currently sits in the no.1 spot. It’s been a great success since its October release and will surely continue to gather momentum – ratings irrelevant.
