by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org
The ancient wisdom reads, "If you're in a poker game, and you can't tell who the pigeon is, it's you." David Mamet's newest is not about a con game rather than a poker game, but the ancient wisdom applies. The pigeon is Joe Ross (Campbell Scott), a mathematician at "The Company" and inventor of "The Process". "The Process" is a valuable calculus formula (or something like that) that stands to earn Ross and "The Company" millions, if he can hold on to it.
If you haven't seen a David Mamet movie, shame on you. Go rent House of Games right now. Those of us who have know what to expect: crisp dialogue and Byzantine plotting. The Spanish Prisoner doesn't disappoint in these areas. The rapid-fire, intelligent Mamet trademark dialogue is on display here in all its glory. The confidence game (when we finally see it unfold) is slick and cunning, with a touch of purest evil. (I refuse to spoil the movie for you by giving away any details.)
And yet, for all the richness of its script and strength of its plot, The Spanish Prisoner is a poor, weak shadow of previous Mamet efforts. And it's a weak movie because it focuses on the Campbell Scott character. Part of it is that Mamet really isn't interested in Scott's character or what he does. Part of it is that Scott really isn't very interesting as an actor -- he plays the entire movie like he's trying to do a Harold Ramis imitation. Scott gets called a Boy Scout a lot in this movie (he even has a Scout knife that says "Be Prepared") and he is brave, reverent and clean and all that, but God love him, he isn't interesting. And it's not fair to say that he's not interesting because he's the pigeon -- the pigeons nesting outside my office are more interesting than Scott is in this movie.
You would think that the supporting characters would help pull this movie off, and you would be wrong. Mamet favorite Ricky Jay makes an appearance, but is sadly underused and does little more than spout platitudes. Steve Martin (unseen since Sgt. Bilko, can that be right?) is a Dirty Rotten Scoundrel, sure enough, but he's done the con-man schtick much better in the two aforementioned movies and in Leap of Faith. Ben Gazarra is in the movie but shouldn't be.
The saving grace of The Spanish Prisoner is Rebecca Pidgeon as Susan Ricci, Scott's loyal secretary. Mamet has put some odd, anachronistic dialogue into her mouth ("Crikey!" "Dog my cats.") but she is impressive and convincing in a pivotal role. She has a very odd delivery which would be very annoying if she weren't spouting tailor-made Mamet dialogue. This is her first big movie role, and I hope to see her again.
The movie's mantra is "The Process". "The Process" is valuable, precious, and will lead to controlling the market in some vague and nebulous way. And there's a process at work in The Spanish Prisoner, too, and it is crafted by a masterful filmmaker. But any process is only as good as the people who implement it -- and in The Spanish Prisoner, the implementation sabotages The Process.
Rating: B
-- Curtis Edmonds blueduck@hsbr.org
The Hollywood Stock Brokerage and Resource Your Guide to the Hollywood Stock Exchange http://www.hsbr.org/brokers/blueduck/
"Are you kidding? No jury in the world would convict a baby for murder. Well, maybe Texas."
-- Chief Clancy Wiggum
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews