directed by Peter Berg
The backstory, which is revealed at the beginning of the movie, is that Spenser is a former police officer from Boston. He spent 5 years in prison for attacking Captain Boylan, a superior officer in the Boston Police Department. He has plans to move to Arizona and start over but those plans quickly get derailed when Captain Boylan is murdered.
Spenser is suspected of killing Boylan but he has an alibi. Spenser is ready to move on with his life when Terence Graham, another police officer, is murdered. Graham was a colleague of Spenser's. The murder of Boylan quickly gets pinned on Graham. Spenser can't let that stand and starts to look into what happened.
Spenser is assisted by Henry, his father, and Hawk, who is renting a space in his father's house and trains at Henry's gym. Spenser finds evidence that leads him to believe that Driscoll, his former partner, has something to do with both murders. Spenser turn to Cissy, his ex-girlfriend, for help when he and Hawk suspect that Driscoll and the other dirty cops are targeting them.
Thoughts
I think this is a fairly standard story or movie of this sort. Good ex-cop tries to solve what seems to be a simple case and quickly discovers that that there is considerably more going on beneath the surface than he thought there was.
Spenser has a propensity for getting beaten up. It happens on more than one occasion.
Spenser is a character that was created by novelist Robert B. Parker who wrote 40 novels about Spenser. The book that this movie is based on was not written by Parker. There was a TV show in the 1980s called Spenser for Hire that starred Robert Urich and Avery Brooks as Spenser and Hawk and ran for 3 seasons. There was also a spin-off series, A Man Called Hawk, which ran for one season. I have never watched either of those shows.
I saw that this movie was available on Netflix recently but I ignored it until I heard director Peter Berg's conversation on WTF, Marc Maron's podcast. Berg and Maron have known each other for about 30 years and Maron has a small part in the movie as a journalist that Spenser turns to for help.
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. It isn't perfect but I like it and am glad that I took a chance on it.
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