DVD Review: Confess, Fletch

Confess, Fletch
(DVD Confess)

I’ll have to admit, the two 1980s Fletch movies starring Chevy Chase and I.M. Fletcher are among my “guilty pleasure” movie favorites. Chase is so over-the-top “wacky” as con man/investigative journalist Fletch in those two films that his comical performance kind of overwhelms the stories in Fletch (1985) and Fletch Lives (1989).

 

This new 2022 film, both starring and produced by Jon (Mad Men) Hamm, takes Gregory McDonald’s second Fletch novel, Confess Fletch (1976), and updates it to our modern era, but manages to keep much of the style and tone intact. Hamm is far more subtle than Chase was at bringing Fletch to life, but that works in his favor. He doesn’t need outrageous costumes or larger-than-life fake personalities to ingratiate Fletch with the characters he’s interacting with — his Fletch is simply slick and fast on the uptake. In this film, Fletch returns from Europe to find a dead woman in the luxury loft apartment he’s been leant by a friend. Fletch quickly becomes the #1 suspect in the eyes of the pair of homicide detectives investigating the case, and his efforts to locate a stolen art collection are hampered by his needs to come up with ways to shake his police tail.

 

Hamm is absolutely terrific in this, but he’s not the only one. Kyle MacLachlan is fun as a germophobic bad guy, Roy Wood Jr. and Ayden Mayeri as detectives “Slo Mo” Monroe and Griz provide a lot of comic relief, Lorenza Izzo as Fletch’s new Italian girlfriend, who sets the case in motion, is a firebrand, and Marcia Gay Harden (currently killing it on the CBS drama So Help Me Todd) is amusing as the Countess de Grassi.

If you’re at all a fan of the original Fletch novels by McDonald, you should appreciate this new film. Here’s hoping it was successful enough to inspire another!

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the two earlier Fletch movies, starring Chevy Chase Fletch and Fletch Lives, or any of the eleven Fletch novels by Gregory McDonald, published between 1974 and 1994 — the earliest are the best.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

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