SPARTAN
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Mamet could not put both intelligence and action in this political thriller and gave the latter priority. Val Kilmer is an anti-terrorist operative called in on the kidnapping of an important woman. The story has some interesting twists. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
This is a political action thriller with the accent on action and not intelligence. Not that David Mamet would ever give us a stupid film, but the action leaves insufficient time to fill out the plot. SPARTAN is no MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. It is a film of shoot-outs and sudden violence. Mamet, who wrote and directed SPARTAN, has done more intelligent films, but the action somewhat gets in the way. The pacing is quick and the dialog is crisply in Mamet's style.
Val Kilmer plays Robert Scott who trains military soldiers for what is probably counter-terrorist actions. He teaches people to be lethal and to sweat even the smallest details. Suddenly Scott is called in on the kidnapping of a nationally-known Harvard student.
A lot of people seem very concerned about this particular crime, but it takes a while for the audience to know why. Mamet carefully avoids the traditional expository dialog that would explain what is going on but which is probably not realistic. It is the audience's responsibility to get up to speed. Mamet's strategy in to throw the viewer in the middle of an unfamiliar situation and to make the us work to understand what has happened. His point may be that while some films work hard to create puzzles for the viewer, just placing the viewer in the middle of an unfamiliar situation and letting him figure out what is going on is puzzle enough. In his previous films, like THE SPANISH PRISONER, he has intentionally set up tricks on his audience. He does that much less in SPARTAN, which like THE UNTOUCHABLES is more a straight action film. The puzzle here is figuring out what is happening, who everybody is, and what each person's open and hidden agendae are.
It has been noted that Mamet likes to do stories of professional men on the job. He dramatizes how they talk and how they relate to each other under stress. Usually he has a standard set of actors several of which will be in each film. There is no role for Rebecca Pidgeon this time around and William H. Macy only lurks around in the background of scenes without even a line to speak until late in the film. Incidentally, Said Taghmaoui has a role as a low-life. I don't know who this actor is, and I have seen him only once before as an eloquent and very angry Iraqi in THREE KINGS. But he does make a strong impression and when he is on the screen he IS the movie.
Listening to Mamet's dialog is like watching ping-pong. In ping- pong the ball goes back and forth, spending little time on either side of the net, but is always on one side or the other. In Mamet dialog, A says something terse and clipped, then B does, then A does. Nobody talks over anyone else. It was less obvious in SPARTAN, but the dialog is stylized.
Much of what the film is about is the amoral nature of modern power politics. The film overstates its message against politicians much as it overstates the violence. Mamet wants to sensationalize and shock a little. It makes for a decent lower- budget action film, but it is does not show the full intelligence we have come to expect from Mamet. I rate SPARTAN a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper
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