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Title: Good film, questionable casting choices
Review: If you've read the novel, you will be pleased to know that this stays quite true to it--most likely due to Parker himself scripting it (he also appears as mysterious government operative Ives). What I wasn't too thrilled about was the casting decisions and how they differed from previous Spenser flicks and the old "Spenser: For Hire" TV series: I could live with a new Belson (done once before), a new Susan (done twice before) and a new Quirk (the original actor died), but even with the recastings done in the Lifetime Spenser movies, they retained Robert Urich and Avery Brooks as Spenser and Hawk. Mantegna's a little too Brooklyn-sounding to be Bostonian, and Sheik Mahmud-Bey is way too friendly to even be considered a successor to Brooks. Also, all the police uniforms featured herein are Canadian-style; Captain Healy's Massachusetts State Police uniform isn't even close to the real thing. However, this new film is significantly edgier than the previous ones.
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