Coup-de couteau politics makes for entertaining, keep-you-guessing type of thriller.
Fans of television’s “24†might want to see how it is really done and perhaps put on their thinking caps for the maitre’d of intelligent screenplays. While his last film in Heist felt convoluted, flashpoint, too perfect and not raw enough, David Mamet’s newest is a witty, high-octane fest set among the usual snakes and ladders world of government operatives, Watergate politics, Bill and Monica’s and JFK conspiracy theories. With his ability to snoop around in the underbelly of behind the scenes government activity (by now the playwright must have an FBI file of his own) Spartan merges the politics of Wag the Dog and the snappy plot twists as in The Spanish Prisoner.
Power struggles and moral corruption are front and center in this cat and mouse game where doors that should be shut keep on getting opened. Val Kilmer (The Salton Sea) plays a solid lead in the role of a special missions operative, who is ultimately a lone solider who just wants the facts and doesn’t bother with good boy scout traits. The modest everyday Joe turns into an unsung and unwanted hero where the president’s daughter is kidnapped–or so we think, and the media dogs are closing in and where a lead is followed that shouldn’t have been.
Screenwriting doesn’t get any better than this; there are more twists and turns than the GP Monaco street race circuit, which could be, in fact, a bad thing, but in this case we easily let a couple of iffy, perhaps exaggerated suggestions slip by and let the entire composition of plot-twisting elements thrive as a whole. Mamet doesn’t waste much time in building the momentum, he manages to incorporate each sequence stretch with an imminent sense that the next sequence is as important as the one before or the one that follows. Part of the ingredients is to let the viewer situate themselves, either keeping them at par with the protagonist or by design, keeping them one step behind.
Hard-nosed Kilmer is impressive in this late stage of the game,- he delivers a noteworthy performance with his hard as nails demeanor, while the rest of the cast don’t seem out of place either with gun-pointing tough guys and girls. Derek Luke who I couldn’t stand in Antwone Fisher supplies a steady presence as a underhand trainee, while William H. Macy (The Cooler) lurks perfectly in the background and the underused Ed O’Neill returns for a second Mamet film, finally as for Mamet-regular Rebecca Pidgeon, she is not on the attendance sheet.
Key to the Mamet style is the beautiful, characteristically stamped Mamet dialogue with its poetic use of profanity and hard-core one liner’s. The choice of locales are a definite plus for the film, the exterior compositions on shipping ports, abandoned hideaways, other places out of nowhere and my personal favorite in the “questioning†room give a true sense of displacement in the plot. The steadicam presence insulates a certain mysterious aura as if it heightens the notion that we are entering a world of secrecy where not many people have ventured into or have access to and with reason.
With a razor-sharp dialogue, precision high caliber acting and the narrative will keep you guessing, Spartan reinvigorates the thriller genre which is full of attempted and unsuccessful pieces. This thinking piece is elaborate on the pace and ranks among Mamet’s best.
