Metacritic reviews

It’s a fantastically over-the-top, drive-in B-movie for the streaming generation.

Adapted apparently quite loosely from Atkins’ Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, Spenser Confidential has ended up with a genially amusing script expertly tailored to its actors by Sean O’Keefe and the canny veteran Brian Helgeland. And, as smartly cast by the veteran Sheila Jaffe, Spenser Confidential gets spot on performances from a variety of actors, from household names including Alan Arkin to other less celebrated but undeniably talented folks.

You might not pay money to see this in a theater, but you’d watch it on your couch in a second, which is why Netflix makes perfect sense for it. A coda sets up a sequel. There are worse things to look forward to.

Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke's fun chemistry helps elevate the predictable murder-mystery Spenser Confidential.

The film even pokes fun at itself in the process, fully aware that Spenser Confidential isn’t meant to be taken as seriously as Wahlberg’s last few movies — and just as well, since irreverence plays well on Netflix.

A boilerplate action-comedy, that, while not wholly original, provides enough memorable two-fisted tough guy action and likable characters to waste a Wednesday night with on the fly.

While the partnership between Wahlberg and actor-turned-director Peter Berg has produced a few duds since the success of Lone Survivor, none have been as generically mediocre. At the very least, one can appreciate it for being environmentally friendly.

Spenser Confidential is a bit of a mess tonally with a plot that keeps attracting new weird layers, like lint on a sweater. It wants to be funnier than it is. It hopes to be deeper than it is.

An insipid buddy-cop mystery that feels like a forgotten artifact of the 1980s.

A junky, paint-by-numbers crime saga that stacks up to The Town like Cats does to Singin’ in the Rain. It pains a lifelong New Yorker to say this, but Boston deserves better.