The Unseen Movie Review

Spartan

David Mamet has been keeping a fairly low profile for the last few years: his last cinematic outing was as co-screenwriter for Ridley Scott’s quirky, big-budget serial killer thriller Hannibal back in 2001. He is, of course, most fondly remembered by cinephiles for his claustrophobic ensemble character study, 1992’s superb Glengarry Glen Ross, and excellent script for Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, as well as his strangely prescient screenplay for 1997’s Wag the Dog, in which an American President launches a fictional war to help win an election.

This film also marks a return of sorts for Val Kilmer, a much-derided actor who hasn’t really bothered to put in any effort to a performance since his turn as Doc Holliday in 1993’s entertaining western Tombstone. The phrase “Val Kilmer was really good in…” is more often than not used with a heavy dose of sarcasm, but this is one of those rare movies where he actually lives up to the potential he showed as Jim Morrison in 1991’s The Doors and, believe it or not, when Kilmer puts in a good performance he can hack it with the best of them.

Here, Kilmer takes on one of those cinematic archetypes that so many actors seem drawn to at some point in their careers – the super-cool secret agent, master of his art, with a plentiful supply of witty quips, the heart of a killer, yet an underlying moral certainty that gives him the strength to go up against even his superiors if he feels they are in the wrong. But this is not the usual cliché-ridden spy flick – at least, not for the majority of its length.

Mamet specialises in complexity and intelligence, as well as in great dialogue, and when it comes to crafting a political conspiracy thriller it is a given that he will be able to create something more interesting than the usual Hollywood pap. No True Lies, this, but an altogether darker beast, aided by some interesting camerawork from Director of Photography Juan Ruiz Anchía, the man behind the visual claustrophobia and depression of Glengarry Glen Ross, which is artfully replicated for a different genre here.

On the surface the plot is simple: a university student has been kidnapped by what appears to be an international sex-slave ring but, and here’s the typical Hollywood twist, she is the daughter of the President himself. Yet Mamet would never be satisfied to leave it at that, and nothing is as simple as it seems. As Kilmer’s agent is set off on the trail of the kidnappers, uncertainties pile on top of confusions, making for a satisfying maelstrom of doubts that will keep the audience happily guessing away.

For a good two thirds of the movie, the narrative twists and turns in a wild orgy of inventive and intelligent plotting, with more questions mounting up with each passing scene, Kilmer a brooding, determined hard-man at the eye of the storm of conspiracy. But as the story rushes towards its conclusion in a Tom Clancy dash there are sadly a few directorial and scripting stumbles along the route – largely due to the need to explain everything.

If Mamet had been able to leave at least some of the threads dangling loose, this could have been a real classic. As it is, Spartan settles neatly in alongside the likes of Philip Noyce’s Clear and Present Danger and Wolfgang Petersen’s In the Line of Fire as a good effort at a complex political thriller that, despite falling slightly short of its potential, is still worthy of a couple of hours of your life.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 12:00 AM