MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

A fun action-thriller crime caper from writer-director Shane Black, Play Dirty is the seventh film based on the ‘Parker’ series of novels by author Donald E. Westlake, writing under the pseudonym Richard Stark. In this film Mark Wahlberg steps into the cinematic shoes previously occupied by notables such as Lee Marvin (Point Blank, 1967), Robert Duvall (The Outfit, 1973), and Mel Gibson (Payback, 1999) as the titular hard-boiled professional thief. In this story Parker gets a shot at a major heist, but to pull it off he and his team must outsmart a South American dictator, the New York mob, and the world’s richest man. The film co-stars LaKeith Stanfield, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, Gretchen Mol, Thomas Jane, and Tony Shalhoub, and premiered on Amazon Prime Video in October 2025, to mostly positive reviews.

Many of those positive reviews have been reserved for composer Alan Silvestri, who responded to the film by writing an absolutely fantastic jazz-inflected action score which many critics and commentators are calling one of his best and most memorable works; I would be inclined to agree. Silvestri is 75 years old now, well past the age when most men would be considering retirement, but in the last couple of year alone he has written excellent music for films such as Here and The Electric State, and has Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars coming in 2026 and 2027 respectively, so in many ways he is still very much in his film scoring prime. Play Dirty very much confirms that theory.

The key selling point of Play Dirty is its main theme, which is an absolute knockout. It’s dirty, jazzy, funky, and built around a killer melody which plays sort of like a combination of his film noir sound from scores things like Death Becomes Her, Shattered, or What Lies Beneath, combined with the slinky and sultry jazz from the more serious parts of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There’s a terrific, overtly classical piano line running beneath the sweeping strings and punchy brasses that I adore, and the whole thing has a wonderfully old fashioned throwback sound that somehow successfully blends the 1950s noir sound of Miklós Rózsa and Bernard Herrmann with the 1960s and 70s spy caper funk of John Barry, Lalo Schifrin, and Quincy Jones. It’s just outstanding.

The bulk of the rest of the score is mostly given over to a series of tightly wound tension and suspense tracks for the heist sequences, which then often erupt into bold, colorful action cues with pleasing regularity. Elements of the main theme weave their way through most of these cues, sometimes overtly with clear melodic statements, sometimes more subtly. Instrumental textures for funk guitars, pianos, a range of varied percussion items, and cool electronic rhythms feature prominently in cues like “My Real Name’s Parker,” “Room 12,” “Shootout,” and “What a Surprise,” while large parts of “Life Goes On” are full-on pieces of romantic jazz.

A lot of these more low-key suspense tracks actually have a great deal in common with both John Barry and David Arnold’s James Bond scores, which is something I didn’t expect, but very much appreciate. There are moments in “Rob An Entire Country” “Welcome To New York” where the music almost emerges fully into the James Bond theme!

I love the intense Predator-esque energy that Silvestri brings to the action arrangement of the theme in “What Have You Done,” which at times has a bossanova-like sound that is quite intoxicating. There is a sense of dark romance running throughout a lot of “A Bit of a Problem” that is really engaging, whereas other parts of the cue are filled with edge-of-your seat tension, driven by relentless percussive strings. The enthralling bossanova licks return in “Plan B,” and there’s a remarkable reference to David Shire’s score for The Taking of Pelham 123 in the exhilarating “A Christmas Chase” which fans of the composer’s modernistic style will greatly appreciate.

However, for me, the action pinnacle of the score is the three-part 9-minute “The Train,” which is essentially a series of highlight moments, one after the other, of everything the score has to offer: the main theme, the jazzy instrumental arrangements, the emphatic power of the orchestra. Slowly building out from the sultry combo writing for electric guitars and pianos at the beginning of “Part 1,” the cue erupts into action at the 1:42 mark of “Part 2” with a wonderful blast of John Barry trumpet goodness, and from that point through to the end of “Part 3” the music rarely lets up, reveling in its big band stylistics, classic funk vibes, intoxicating swagger, and increasingly punchy throbbing intensity. Fans of scores like the aforementioned Predator, as well as things like Eraser and The Long Kiss Goodnight, will very much drawn to the music in the sequence’s final third.

There’s a warm romantic sweep during the conclusion of “A Real Lady,” and this style continues through to the low-key finale in the “Aftermath,” which unexpectedly rounds out the score on a pensive, somewhat downbeat note. A more vibrant statement of the main theme may have provided the album with a more emotionally satisfying coda, but the introspection of the piece is actually important in terms of how the film ends, and so ultimately this is a minor quibble.

Overall, Play Dirty is an outstanding score, which takes many of the most popular and well-loved Alan Silvestri compositional stylistics and drops them into a wonderfully evocative film noir/spy caper jazz setting that work on all fronts, and is one of the best scores of its type this year. The score is currently available to stream and as a digital download from Sony Classical, but a CD will be available from La La Land Records in late October/early November 2025.

Buy the Play Dirty soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Main Title (2:42)
• My Real Name’s Parker (3:19)
• Robbing the Robbers (1:28)
• What Have You Done? (2:53)
• Room 12 (3:20)
• A Bit of a Problem (3:32)
• Shootout (3:22)
• Rob An Entire Country (3:18)
• Welcome To New York (3:20)
• Bosco’s Plan (1:50)
• Life Goes On (3:36)
• What A Surprise (3:16)
• The Train, Part 1 (3:09)
• The Train, Part 2 (3:13)
• The Train, Part 3 (2:44)
• Plan B (2:59)
• Parker At Work (2:59)
• A Christmas Chase (3:51)
• A Real Lady (2:00)
• The Vault (2:59)
• Aftermath (2:13)

Sony Classical/La La Land Records (2025)

Running Time: 62 minutes 14 seconds

Music composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri. Orchestrations by Mark Graham. Recorded and mixed by Dennis Sands and Nick Wollage. Edited by Charles Martin Inouye. Album produced by Alan Silvestri and David Bifano.