Can I create a button that will update a field of every record in a report?

OK, so there are ways to mass update a set of records with a button, but there needs to be a way to identify the "set".  Simply being on a random report with a bunch of simple or perhaps very complex filters is not enough to be able to call an API to do a mass update.  But if there are a a limited number of standard filters for the report there are some approaches, but there is nothing simple.