The Spanish Prisoner

Slights of hand, trickery of the verbal, visual, and plot kind - must be Mamet. But wait! What's this?! PG-rated Mamet?! This cannot be! Surely the sizzle and grit is gone. But no. The Spanish Prisoner is actually quite good.

The film follows Campbell Scott, a inventor of sorts, whose character has created something that will make the company he works for a lot of money. Keeping his hands on the secret seems easy enough. Should be.

I watched the first 45-60 minutes of this movie wondering what I was watching. I couldn't categorize the film, not because I couldn't follow it. Rather, I had no idea where the plot could or would go.

I should say that I was able to figure out where. And I knew what kind of movie it was. I started out thinking it was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie - maybe The Man Who Knew Too Much. Then I realized I was going about it all wrong. The Spanish Prisoner should be filed under Mamet in the video store, cause it has his handiwork written all over it.

That's both good and bad. Like I have noticed in his other movies (Heist and Spartan specifically), he pulls the wool over your eyes but leaves a peep hole. You get tricked, but the real trickery is making the trickery so obvious that you miss it anyway. I started to think, "That's not all that smart. It's simple, really. Maybe too simple." But that's the genius of Mamet - too simple to be dumb. Does that make sense? He plays your judgments against you. Trying to figure out what's happening only makes you miss things you should have been paying attention to.

If Mamet's struggled at his own game, it's most apparent in The Spanish Prisoner. The problem isn't that he didn't take me for all I'm worth. He did. He got me fair and square. The problem is that he was too obvious this time around. He made specific reference points stick out (WAY out) in front of the audience. He said "This is important! Remember this!" So I did. In that way, he makes his most accessible movie. No one's gonna get lost. It's all there. The audience can jumble things around, question themselves, but still figure it out long before they're supposed to. I know I just said he got me. The thing is that any number of people could have paid enough attention to be on the up and up the whole way through. It's not hard. I'm just the kind of guy ripe for the fooling. That's not Mamet's fault. It's mine. His problem is over accentuating the clues.

I praise and criticize Mamet for the same thing. I must be out of my mind, right? A little. Happily, Mamet challenges me. He's always successful, but he doesn't always go about it the right way.

Other things - his handling of the end was soft. Satisfying, but only because it wrapped things up, not because the dialogue was Mamet-sharp or even all that convincing. It winds up in a fashion not above that of a TV movie or Law and Order.

I am a HUGE fan of the first two acts. Yahoo! Write-it-down-in-love with the first two acts. But that last act, which I can certainly tolerate, brought me down off my high.

Campbell Scott - good. Steve Martin - solid. Rebecca Pigeon - so so. And that's the thing. Mamet could have casted dozens of more accomplished and more talented actresses than his wife. I like Rebecca Pigeon. I even liked her in this movie. But she ends up just being okay. And she kind of blows her part in the last act. I loved her and she was good in State and Main, but if I'm honest with myself, Mamet can do better...you know...casting wise.

I know this review is confusing. I'd like to say that was on purpose to try to play off some of the same slight of hand Mamet uses, but it's just because Mamet drives me crazy. For better or worse.

***1/2