Mark Wahlberg, Post Malone, Winston Duke and a lot of punching: the first trailer for Spenser Confidential is here.
Based on the best-selling novel Wonderland by Ace Atkins and on the Spenser character created by Robert B. Parker, the Netflix Original places Wahlberg in a bombastic tale of murder and police corruption.
It reunites the The Departed star with his longtime collaborator Peter Berg, who he worked with on Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day and the much-maligned Mile 22 (which was their last project together).
Check out the first trailer for Spenser Confidential below:
The titular character is no stranger to the screen – back in 1985, the late Robert Ulrich played him in Spenser: For Hire on ABC. The trailer, nearly lasting a full three minutes, dishes out a fair bit of plot (probably way too much of it), but we’ll run you through the general story anyway.
The official Netflix synopsis for the film reads:
Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) – an ex-cop better known for making trouble than solving it – just got out of prison and is leaving Boston for good.
But first he gets roped into helping his old boxing coach and mentor, Henry (Alan Arkin), with a promising amateur. That’s Hawk (Winston Duke), a brash, no-nonsense MMA fighter convinced he’ll be a tougher opponent than Spenser ever was.
When two of Spenser’s former colleagues turn up murdered, he recruits Hawk and his foul-mouthed ex-girlfriend, Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), to help him investigate and bring the culprits to justice.
Explaining more of the backstory, Spenser tells Hawk in the trailer: ‘Picture this: dirty cops, drug cartels and some big politicians all working together. When I was a cop, I was trying to take these guys down, but they framed me.’
Wahlberg is also a producer on the film (alongside Berg and Neal H. Moritz), which also stars Bokeem Woodbine, Cassie Ventura, and Donald Cerrone (who recently found himself on the end of a swift Conor McGregor beating).
It’s the first high-profile role for Duke since appearing in Jordan Peele’s brilliant Us last year, as well as reprising his role as M’Baku in Avengers: Endgame. There’s also Post Malone – while he only appears briefly in the trailer, he makes an impression, telling Wahlberg’s character: ‘You’re about to walk barefoot through the gates of hell.’
Spenser Confidential is set to drop on Netflix on March 6.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.