Mark Wahlberg! Winston Duke! Peter Berg! Post Malone? Uh, sure! This power quartet recently teamed up to deliver Netflix original Spenser Confidential, a cheerfully throwback Boston-set action-comedy. And the movie has caught fire, routinely making Netflix’s new top 10 lists, proving again that streaming is the perfect platform for mid-budget star-driven genre pictures to throw on and chill the heck out. If you dug the vibes of Spenser Confidential and are looking for stuff in a similar vein, look no further. Here’s what you should watch after Spenser Confidential -- all conveniently on Netflix!
Point Blank
Director: Joe Lynch
Writer: Adam G. Simon
Cast: Frank Grillo, Anthony Mackie, Marcia Gay Harden, Teyonah Parris, Boris McGiver, Christian Cooke, Markice Moore
This movie is lean, mean, and full of no-frills thrills. Genre maestro Joe Lynch (Mayhem) has himself quite the perfect action duo in Frank Grillo as a sympathetic criminal trying to pay his debts and expose police corruption, and Anthony Mackie as the nurse who happens to get assigned to Grillo in the aftermath of a shootout. The two form an uneasy alliance and plow their way through the city, surviving shootouts, colorful characters, and a delightfully devilish Marcia Gay Harden as the big, bad, corrupt cop. While the film plays a little more “meat and potatoes” than the more “willing to be silly” Spenser Confidential, it still has an appealingly dark sense of humor at its core, and Lynch knows how the hell to stage a “one crazy day” flick and all his set pieces. For under 90 minutes, Point Blank packs quite a Netflix punch.
Bad Boys
Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland, Doug Richardson, George Gallo
Cast: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Téa Leoni, Tchéky Karyo, Theresa Randle, Joe Pantoliano
If you caught Bad Boys for Life in theaters and want some more of that throwback action-comedy charm, well hey, the original is on Netflix! Will Smith and Martin Lawrence ooze fast-paced charm in Michael Bay’s directorial debut, a Miami-set yarn of long-time friends and detectives trying to bust a drug case without busting each other’s heads first. This film is to Miami as Spenser Confidential is to Boston -- a stylized, ultra-masculine travelogue dedicated to the grimiest yet most appealing facets of this very specific world. Bay’s sunswept, typically kinetic camera work is equal parts jarring and exciting, and every single actor is off the dang leash (particularly MVP Joe Pantoliano). It ain’t a subtle movie, and it’s often a problematic movie, but if you can turn off your brain it’s about some of the best movie candy Netflix can stream.
Skiptrace
Director: Renny Harlin
Writers: Jay Longino, BenDavid Grabinski, Wen-Chia Chang
Cast: Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville, Fan Bingbing
In the long and storied pantheon of buddy cop action-comedies, I’m fond of the pairings that surprise upon first glance, and then feel inevitable when you think about them. Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville, the center of Renny Harlin’s Skiptrace, is the perfect example. While it may seem like an odd combo at first, their career paths and performative trademarks fit together like peanut butter and chocolate. In Chan’s storied action films and Knoxville’s Jackass franchise, both stars enthusiastically put their bodies on the line, eager to elicit equal parts jaw-dropping thrills and astonished gasp-laughs -- all while emoting the hell out of their faces, heightening the standards of Buster Keaton with perilously relatable exasperation. And while Skiptrace doesn’t reach the delirious heights of the performers’ previous work, I don’t think it’s designed to. Its screenplay spins a familiar-feeling cops-and-criminals narrative, flinging Chan and Knoxville as tasty dressing atop a pre-prepared salad. This is not to say Harlin’s staging of set pieces is something to scoff at -- Skiptrace has a lot of fun not just with Chan and Knoxville’s chemistry, but with its grand, goofy, gripping visuals.
The Other Guys
Director: Adam McKay
Writers: Adam McKay, Chris Henchy
Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Ray Stevenson, Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson
If you loved watching Mark Wahlberg’s comedic chemistry with Winston Duke, why not watch him achieve a similar-yet-different level of synergy with Will Ferrell? The Other Guys, the perfect bridge between Adam McKay’s silly comedies and muckraking dramas, is a curious watch, a purposeful deconstruction of both its stars screen presences, and a very, very fun action-comedy. Ferrell is playing in an appealingly lower register, eschewing his typical “loud, confident idiot” persona for a calmer, more mild-mannered voice of reason -- a look he wears well. And Wahlberg is absolutely unhinged, weaponizing his underrated sense of “emotional desperation” into a brilliant piece of comedic acting -- his detective is like if his character from The Departed absolutely lost his marbles and got scared of everyone. From its prescient plotting to its MVP supporting cast (Michael Keaton forever and ever, amen), The Other Guys has smarter-than-you’d-expect fun to spare.
Blitz Patrollie
Director: Andrew Wessels
Writer: Kagiso Lediga
Cast: Joey Rasdien, David Kau
The low budget South African-made Blitz Patrollie, from the makers of popular South African sketch comedy show The Pure Monate Show, is a curious, delightful, completely atypical watch. Its narrative feels like many of the films on this list, and a little like Hot Fuzz: Two cops in a sleepy small-town Johannesburg precinct accidentally stumble across a huge criminal conspiracy, with one cop insisting on playing things by the book and another cop eager to play “action hero.” But its visual construction charms the pants off of you and sticks out from its slicker brethren because of how inherently unslick it is. You can tell the picture was stuck together with a microbudget, and director Andrew Wessels both leans into his limitations, selling the hell out the screenplay and letting his performers have fun with it, but also elevates his limitations with deft compositions and pieces of excellent visual comedy direction. Watching Blitz Patrollie reminds me of watching early MTV shows like The Sifl and Olly Show -- it’s a peculiar, handmade tone that, if you can give yourself over to, will fast become a hard favorite. Watch Blitz Patrollie and make it the cult classic it deserves to be.
