Knee-jerk review: "Confess, Fletch"

1. Very sharp and smart.
2. The sort of old-fashioned, low-key mystery that Hollywood doesn't really make much of anymore. 
3. So of course it was quietly released in theaters for a couple of weeks before getting quickly shuttled over to streaming services.
4. To paraphrase entertainment pundit Scott Mendelson, audiences like to complain about how youth-oriented comic book movies overrun the neighborhood multiplex, but when something like Confess, Fletch gets made, no one goes to see it.  Then again, Paramount and Miramax really didn't give this one a chance for audiences to find it.
5. Have you ever had a weird neighbor like Eve?
6. There's something strangely compelling about a movie where the stakes are so low.  This isn't about the end of the world. It's about a single murder linked to an upper-class conspiracy to steal and sell some rare art.  Marvel doesn't really do insurance fraud dramas.
7. Chevy Chase obviously made the Fletch role his own in the original two movies in the 1980s.  But Jon Hamm is unexpectedly perfect here.  He doesn't have Chase's improv wiseass vibe, but he's totally nailed Fletch's snarky and bemused "I'm smarter than you" attitude.
8. Poor Detective Griz.
9. We were strangely reminded of the Amazon Prime Jack Reacher series.  Like Reacher, Fletch here always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else.  Even when he's arrested, it's more of an inconvenience than a genuine problem.  He's completely unflappable.  Audiences won't worry about what will happen to him.
10. Instead, the movie creates interest through the serpentine plot of the mystery.  It's great fun to watch Fletch meet quirky characters, sift through the clues, follow suspects (and duck those who are following him), and concoct elaborate lies and schemes to get what he needs.
11. It's not a comedy in the usual sense of the word.  But it's definitely got funny moments.
12. Bonus points for quick references to how much Lakers and Celtics fans hate each other. 
13. "Bespoke" is a pretty pretentious word.
14. We must also applaud the ending: without spoiling anything, let's just say that Fletch isn't exactly the conventional hero who puts it all together and saves the day.
15. The Cheese Fry in middle school was fairly obsessed with the original Fletch.  We don't want to admit that we transcribed the entire movie by hand to better study the structure and dialogue... but we totally transcribed the entire movie by hand to better study the structure and dialogue.  Push play on the VCR, listen, push stop, write down what happened, push play again.  We were strange, no doubt.  It's easy to focus on the Chevy one-liners, but there's a pretty dense and layered mystery driving the plot.
16. We'd absolutely love to see a sequel.

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