Play Dirty director mentions this Robert Redford thriller as a major influence

Play Dirty director Shane Black has just given fans a neat little breadcrumb: This Robert Redford thriller served as a major influence for this little detail he adds to all his films. The director namechecked Three Days of the Condor as a touchstone or his films' strain of quiet dread and slow burn-conspiracies, while also dropping a few details for some of his upcoming anticipated projects and what fans can expect in Play Dirty.

In a Collider interview, Black, Play Dirty's producer Jules Daly, and executive producer Susan Downey sat down for a chat as they revealed more details about the film. When asked about why he adds Christmas to all of his films, Shane Black talked about how the holiday offers kind of an arena, to highlight some people's loneliness as they go through it alone. It's a different experience for "the guy outside in the snow" and in exploring how he finds his own version of the holiday, a wonderful premise is built.

Continuing on how Robert Redford's film also had an influence on this little detail, he adds,

"In Los Angeles, I was walking late at night with the wind blowing, and there was a little plastic candle of the Virgin swinging on a line from a Mexican lunch wagon, and I looked at it in the dark like a beacon. I thought, in its own way, that's so moving, this little blowing, cracked plastic Virgin. It's as impressive and powerful in its own way as the 40-foot-tall Christmas tree on the lawn of the White House. So, I just love the sense of shared experience, the sort of retrospective it gives us, where we're asked to take stock and look back on our lives. Also, I first saw it and its use in Sydney Pollack's film Three Days of the Condor, and I thought it just had some magic to it."

More details about Play Dirty

Shane Black’s Play Dirty is slick, ruthless, and ready to burn. Based on Donald E. Westlake’s hard-boiled Parker novels, the film finds Mark Wahlberg slipping into the role of Parker, a professional thief who lives by his own code. When a racetrack heist goes sideways and his crew is wiped out, Parker crawls out of a river, half-dead and hell-bent on vengeance.

Black injects it with his signature bite, fast-talking criminals, bruised humor, and a world where loyalty costs more than gold. Parker’s bloody comeback drags him into a conspiracy that stretches from back-alley hits to international corruption, with the late Philly’s widow Grace, played by Gretchen Mol pulling on his conscience, and Grofield, played by LaKeith Stanfield, a theater-owning crook with an existential streak, pulling him deeper into chaos.

Shot across Sydney’s harbor and the Hills District, Play Dirty looks and feels like a throwback to the gritty thrillers of the 1970s. Alan Silvestri’s score keeps things taut and pulsing, while Amazon MGM’s Prime Video release cements it as one of 2025’s most explosive streaming debuts. It’s pure Shane Black: cynical, stylish, and irresistibly dirty.