Not being one to celebrate Christmas in its typical context, I have an annual tradition of celebrating Shane Black Christmas. He added it to screenplays through the 1990s (including The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight), and he kept it going when he moved into the director’s chair to make Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3 (I’ll add that I include The Nice Guys in the marathon too given its final scene set in late December). Play Dirty's script struggles to workaround movie-goers' familiarity with the heist genre, and it tries to do too much. Of course, another classic Shane Black-ism is the amazing buddy dynamic that is his bread-and-butter. Within the Shane Black Christmas canon, Play Dirty doesn’t represent the filmmaker at the height of his powers, but it is him working square within his wheelhouse (Black and Westlake/Stark is a perfect match) and generating entertaining results.