Film review by Kevin Patterson
THE SPANISH PRISONER Rating: *** (out of four) PG, 1998 Directed and written by David Mamet. Starring Campbell Scott, Rebecca Pidgeon, Steve Martin.
I suppose I never had a particularly strong belief in the integrity Corporate America, but I don't know if I ever imagined the amount of backstabbing, double-cross, and ultimately murderous greed that seems to permeate David Mamet's THE SPANISH PRISONER. The film is centered around Joe Ross (Campbell Scott), who has just come up with a new invention that looks to make a fortune for his company. But as soon as he starts demanding his fair share, he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy devised by someone who is evidently looking to steal his idea and frame him for several crimes, thus putting him safely out of the way.
Mamet builds up to this with a fairly long setup that is almost dreamlike in its stiff, idiosyncratic dialogue and exposition. Many details are withheld, such as what exactly Joe has invented, what his job is, what company he works for, and exactly how much money they look to rake in (it's written on a blackboard off-screen). A fair amount of the dialogue is concerned with issues of finances or legal procedures, but the characters talk in a very detached and precise manner regardless of the subject matter. When Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon), a secretary from work, decides to pursue a romance with Joe, she dispenses with most of the subtlety fairly quickly, stating what she wants very clearly and directly, as if drawing up a business contract. And then there's the occasional line that just comes out of nowhere, such as when aristocrat Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin) offers to buy Joe's camera for a thousand dollars with the same matter-of-fact, straightforward delivery one would expect of someone asking to borrow a pencil.
Martin's performance is probably the strongest of any in the film. His offer for the camera marks his first appearance, so we know there's something funny about him from the very beginning. He doesn't let us forget it from then on, developing an eerie presence that leads the viewer to question his motives, but without coming right out and declaring, "Hey, I'm a bad guy!" Jimmy Dell is hardly the only eerie element in this film, however: Joe and his employers are so concerned about keeping his invention a secret from competitors that they all start to seem a little bit paranoid after a while, especially when we see the quasi-ominous poster hanging in the company hallways featuring a pointing finger with the caption, "Somebody Talked!" Clearly, someone is going to try to cheat Joe out of his fair share; we just don't know who or when.
Unfortunately, the stiffness that works so well for the first half of the film starts to work against it once the double-cross is set in motion. In a series of plot twists similar to (but somewhat more believable than) those found in THE GAME, all traces of Joe's invention and past acquaintances suddenly start disappearing, while at the same time he is framed for tax fraud and murder. Mamet consistently keeps us guessing about the other characters' real motives and about what will happen next, so I won't give away any more plot details. The downside is that that's about all he does. Because of the precise but emotionally distant way in which the characters behave, we never really understand Joe as anything more than just a normal guy who's driven and ambitious but still honest. Mamet seems to be pushing some sort of lesson about greed and dishonesty, but it's difficult to appreciate it at any level other than the strictly intellectual since Joe isn't quite three-dimensional enough to act as a ciphen for Mamet's ideas to the audience.
The numerous deceptions do manage to tie together by the end without any especially noticeable plot holes, and the script incorporates a number of what seemed at first to be minor (but still noticeable) details into the overall scheme. More than anything, THE SPANISH PRISONER really just runs into the age-old problem of having created an intriguing mystery but then being obliged to solve it by the time the credits roll. Still, it could have been somewhat more successful had Mamet found a way to deliver the idiosyncratic and enticing setup and make Joe a little more human at the same time. With the stale characterizations, THE SPANISH PRISONER is not really much more than a standard paranoid thriller, but it is certainly a very carefully crafted and well-written one.
- - - - - - - Visit my Film Reviews page at: http://members.aol.com/KTPattersn/reviews.html
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