No Surrender Cinema: Spenser Confidential
It’s only been a matter of hours since Spenser Confidential premiered on Netflix, but I’m already on the case, covering it for this special edition of No Surrender Cinema! We’ve got corrupt cops, machete wielding gang members, and so many “Bahston” accents that the film should come with Rosetta Stone software. Slight spoilers for Spenser lay ahead, so if you’d prefer to see what Mark Wahlberg brings to the table as the popular private eye, this is where we part ways.
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Spenser Confidential, the latest live action adaptation of mystery writer Robert B. Parker’s crime solving protagonist, is a little more like a Lethal Weapon film than the Spenser: For Hire series of yesteryear. The film starts with Spenser in prison, having become persona non grata after beating his commanding officer to a pulp in his own front yard. Of course, the beating was not unnecessary, as Spenser believed him to be withholding information on a murder investigation. Oh, and he was drunk on a Saturday morning and in the middle of beating his wife when Spenser came calling. This was all laid on a bit too thick. They might as well have had a freeze frame of Wahlberg with blinking lights and giant bold letters that read “GOOD GUY”, in case viewers were unable to figure it out.
Spenser’s last day in prison goes as well as one would expect it to go in a film that focuses on dirty cops as antagonists. Several prisoners engage him in a brawl as a warning to get out of town once he’s out of jail. He survives the brawl (and an attempted shanking), but life isn’t any easier once he’s out. All of his old colleagues on the police force hate him for what he did, his girlfriend Cissy maintains a love/hate relationship with him, and he’s made to look like a fool when faced with modern products like oat milk and cloud storage. I know that time can be a bitch and tends to fly by, but the man was locked up for five years, not fifty. I know Confidential is supposed to be more of a humorous take on the Spenser character, but the whole “out of touch” characterization felt more forced than funny.
No sooner is Spenser out of prison than the superior officer he took down is killed by a mob of men with machetes. As if Spenser wasn’t hated enough, all of the cops on the BPD immediately make him out to be a suspect. Spenser becomes curious about his old captain’s death, and when another cop turns up dead, Spenser goes all in on trying to figure out just WTF is going on. With only his elderly friend Henry and his gargantuan MMA-trained roommate Hawk to lend a (reluctant) hand, Spenser moves full speed ahead into a tangled web of corruption and deception. His methods are not smooth and definitely not foolproof, but Spenser knows what it’s like to do the right thing and be crucified for it; that’s why he makes it his personal mission to give Officer Terrence Graham the redemption that he deserved.
As a self described action comedy, Spenser Confidential is lacking in both areas. There are a few bare fisted brawls, but anyone expecting excessive explosions and gunfights will be left disappointed. Some chuckles can be had here thanks to Wahlberg’s ability to not take himself so seriously and to Alan Arkin’s portrayal of Henry, but there’s nothing that left me laughing for more than a few seconds. The highlight of the film is Winston Duke as the intimidating Hawk, who went from being begrudgingly loyal to Spenser to proactively inserting himself into volatile situations all in the name of helping Spenser clear Graham’s name posthumously.
Another downside to Spenser Confidential is that everything is so obvious from the get go. I myself have seen enough movies that I can usually figure out where things are going early on, but this film all but said it outright. Those cops that hate Spenser, you think they might wind up being involved somehow? Is Spenser’s old partner, who drops the standard “I’m just doing my job.” really just doing his job? Spenser certainly isn’t going to earn any endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police since the only good cop in the movie is a dead one! This is all topped off by the cast going “Full Boston” with accents straight out of auditions for The Departed. When Spenser and Cissy rendezvous in a men’s room and she screams “Go Sox!” as she orgasms, it’s more cringe inducing than laugh inducing. You’re in Boston, WE GET IT.
I like Wahlberg, and he’s shown us in the past that he can do the cop thing straight up like in The Departed or on the humorous tip in the hella funny The Other Guys. Spenser Confidential is a film full of flaws, but it’s also far from being one of the worst films I’ve watched lately. It’s a direct to video film disguised as a Netflix premiere in that it’s never boring, but will be easily overshadowed by other films of its kind. I can’t in good conscience say it’s anything more than a thumbs in the middle effort, but any film where our hero is messing with the tattooed menace to good music known as Post Malone can’t be all bad.
