Spenser Confidential
SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL - NETFLIXThe trajectory of Peter Berg’s career as a film director is often compared to that of Michael Bay’s. Although both filmmakers have anchored their respective styles around the idea of capitalizing on Tony Scott’s legacy and have successfully kept alive the strand of machismo-laden action cinema of the 80s and 90s, painting them with the same brush is simply inappropriate. While many of Berg’s movies are indulgent and bombastic celebrations of unchecked escapism (e.g. The Kingdom, Battleship or the recent Mile 22), it cannot be denied that he has his heart in the right place.
Spenser Confidential is another such example of a genre movie made by a consciously earnest effort to hark back to an era in film history that has since gone out of vogue. Its premise is simple and will immediately strike a familiar chord with anyone who knows what a video rental store looks and smells like. Accordingly, a disgraced former police officer Spenser (Mark Wahlberg in his fifth collaboration with Berg), released from prison after serving time for assaulting his boss, becomes entangled in a criminal intrigue involving dirty cops and gangsters. Together with a rag-tag group of friends (Iliza Schlesinger, Alan Arkin and Winston Duke — known to wide audiences from his appearances in Black Panther and Us), he attempts to get to the bottom of it and — somewhat unsurprisingly — finds himself in way over his head.
This synopsis alone should raise an eyebrow because it sounds as though it could be applied to a whole bunch of B-movies. To be frank, this film doesn’t have a single original bone in its body. In fact, had it been made thirty years ago, it would have fit snugly on the shelf with other R-rated action thrillers; it would have probably starred Rutger Hauer, Mickey Rourke or Lorenzo Lamas in the titular role. It is abundantly clear that Berg, together with screenwriters Brian Helgeland and Sean O’Keefe, were trying to tune into a genre modality that doesn’t get any love nowadays. Spenser Confidential doesn’t aspire to any blockbuster clout and quite happily frolics in the paddling pool of its own corniness. It wants nothing more than to provide escapist entertainment to mature audiences tired of seeing Spandex-clad superheroes on the screen and having to maintain a mental map of interconnected references between a dozen of preceding movies to make sense of what’s happening on the screen. Instead, this movie is a perfectly serviceable standalone piece of escapism paying homage to Tony Scott with its featherlight demeanour, snappy pacing and a healthy modicum of ridiculousness.
However, it has to be said that Spenser Confidential isn’t a film for everyone. It is specifically geared towards a subsection of the audience who may have an emotional connection to action movies of the 80s and 90s and who are more than willing to excuse the movie’s preposterousness or turn their blind eye to excessively campy and thoroughly inappropriate humour. It may even be impossible to enjoy it without a radical adjustment of expectations because the movie simply doesn’t belong in the current cultural climate. It’s as if the script for this movie was conceived many years ago when Tony Scott was at his peak only to be lost and subsequently discovered in the present time. It is a displaced-in-time living fossil that will appeal to very specific viewers and is likely to annoy quite a few others. Nevertheless, anyone interested in finding out what Jack Reacher would have looked like if it had been made in the 90s might emerge satisfied because Peter Berg’s brand of cinematic escapism is eminently accessible to anyone willing to embrace the stylized campiness Spenser Confidential shamelessly celebrates.
SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL is streaming exclusively on NETFLIX from March 6th 2020
