Martin Campbell, 82, has directed more films since 2020 than most directors half his age, and Just Play Dead has the energy of someone who knows how to move a camera and keep a story in motion. That's not nothing. What's missing is a script sharp enough to justify the setup. The premise has bones: kingpin Jack Wolfe fakes his death to collect insurance, ropes in his unfaithful wife Nora to help frame her surfer lover Chad, then discovers Nora is playing her own angle — and possibly her detective boyfriend Dani's too. If you're tracking the double-crosses, you're doing more work than the film rewards. The Elmore Leonard comparison the film invites is the problem. Leonard's crime comedies worked because the dialogue was the engine — every line landed like a small detonation. Here the dialogue is functional, occasionally sharp, rarely mordant. The characters are types: droll mastermind, gold-digging MILF, hapless surfer. The film knows this and leans into it, which would be fine if the types were executed with more precision. What saves it from being forgettable is the two leads operating at full professional intensity. Green's Nora has a natural bearing that makes every interaction feel like a chess move. Jackson's Jack is on unusually warm form — less the furious specialist and more the self-satisfied narrator of his own legend, reclining on wicker furniture like a man who has already won and is enjoying the view. When they're working Chad over from opposite directions, the film briefly becomes the thing it wants to be. The structure is where the ambition outpaces the execution. Tarantino-style non-linearity up front, imagined homicide scenarios at the climax, a retconned ending — these are genre moves that signal sophistication without delivering it. Each device adds complexity without adding meaning. The film ends up faintly engaging rather than genuinely sharp, which for a crime caper about people this charismatic is a real waste.
