July 23, 2001 - “Planet of the Apes” World Premiere

Nothing about Spenser Confidential makes it stand out so fittingly, you can watch it at home for the price of a monthly subscription. If what you want is a standard action-comedy, here’s another one. At least the price is right.

After serving five years in prison for assaulting a corrupt police captain, former Boston police detective Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) wants to move away from his former coworkers and leave everything behind, including his ex-girlfriend, Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger). When Captain John Boylan (Michael Gaston) is viciously executed and another officer is blamed for the crime, Spenser doesn’t buy it. With the help of his roommate Hawk (Winston Duke) and old friend Henry Cimoli (Alan Arkin), he decides to dig into the case everyone else is a little too eager to call closed.

Aside from a reference to fake news, nothing about Spenser Confidential indicates it was made this year. There’s corruption in the police force but it’s tied to drugs and mob families, that sort of deal. There’s nothing heavy or topical like racism anywhere to be found. It’s a light movie with gags about dogs, randy exes, and Spenser getting repeatedly beaten up but always getting a little closer to the truth in the process. To its credit, the villains are sufficiently despicable for you to want to see things all the way through. Even the bad jokes won't deter you from checking the cast of colourful characters (which include James DuMont as "Tracksuit Charlie" and Spenser old, slightly too friendly ex-partner played by Bokeem Woodbine and a smattering of "bad apples") because you know violent justice will be dispensed soon. Nothing’s particularly intolerable. You just wish this was funnier or that the action scenes tried something new, or that the mystery was less easy to solve. You’ve seen this kind of movie so many times you can figure out all but the minutest of details easily. You can even predict what songs will play during the climax based on the names of people or vehicles.

While Mark Wahlberg, Winston Duke, Alan Arkin, and Iliza Shlesinger play off each other well, the sequel teased at the end fails to raise any excitement. Another Spenser movie would be more of the same and this is already more of what we’ve seen before. It goes through the motions in a perfectly capable manner, which actually makes it more uninteresting and unremarkable than bad. (September 27, 2020)