! SPOILER WARNING
THE VIEWING GUIDE
A deep dive into the must-see moments from the month’s big release
Confess, Fletch
GREG MOTTOLA’S ADAPTATION of Gregory McDonald’s novel is the first film to feature roguish reporter (retired) Irwin M. Fletcher since the one-two Chevy Chase punch of the ’80s. This time he’s played, winningly, by Jon Hamm, in a fun Boston-set caper that deserves to find a second audience.
CONFESSARE, FLETCH
The film begins like the book, with Fletch arriving in Boston from Italy, and entering a rental apartment to find a dead woman on the floor, and him firmly in the frame for her murder. But after the policeman in charge of the investigation — Roy Wood Jr’s Inspector Monroe — shows up, Mottola flashes back to Fletch’s time in Rome, a suggestion of Hamm chum and fellow Fletch fan Neil Gaiman. “In the book, all the Italy information is told through dialogue,” says Mottola. “Jon and I said, ‘ Wouldn’t it be great if we could trick Miramax into letting us go to Italy for a couple of days?’ They did not want us to do that. We whittled it down to one day, with one day of second unit, and did it really fast.”