The Spanish Prisoner (DVD)

...enjoyed Mamet's excellent take on the crime genre (Homicide) recently, my partner and I decided to rent another of his works, the more recent 'Spanish Prisoner', which is Mamet's attempt at a thriller. The premise being that Joe Ross (ably played by Campbell Scott) is a victim of a truly elaborate and large scale con job seemingly masterminded by Jimmy Dell (played by a very straight Steve Martin) - designed to deprive him of lots of money for a ...
...gets deeper and deeper in the mire it appears that his only friend is secretary Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon - apparently the directors wife! Which would explain why she was also in Homicide), and he attempts to extricate himself from an extremely difficult situation.

The film twists and turns from an early point, and by late in the film you simply are unable to trust anyone at all. Even in the final scenes I was still a little uncertain ... more

Having enjoyed Mamet's excellent take on the crime genre (Homicide) recently, my partner and I decided to rent another of his works, the more recent 'Spanish Prisoner', which is Mamet's attempt at a thriller. The premise being that Joe Ross (ably played by Campbell Scott) is a victim of a truly elaborate and large scale con job seemingly masterminded by Jimmy Dell (played by a very straight Steve Martin) - designed to deprive him of lots of money for a 'process' that he has devised, and that apparently lots of people would like to get their hands on. As Ross gets deeper and deeper in the mire it appears that his only friend is secretary Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon - apparently the directors wife! Which would explain why she was also in Homicide), and he attempts to extricate himself from an extremely difficult situation.

The film twists and turns from an early point, and by late in the film you simply are unable to trust anyone at all. Even in the final scenes I was still a little uncertain as to who was on who's side, although it does tie itself up very neatly. The exaggeration of the twists perhaps points to this spoofing the Hollywood thriller staple, for example, there was on moment where a massive hint is dropped to Ross, blatantly and repeatedly but it still takes an age for it to sink in, which I found humourous. Yet at the same time that the film mocks certain genre stereotypes, I still feel that Mamet is doffing his cap with due deference to a genre that has produced its fair share of highly watchable movies (the Sting being a particular classic).

I don't want to write too much as it would simply give away far too much information about a film which you really need to discover for yourself! So overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It was smart, it was fun, it was extremely well plotted, acted and scripted. Its nothing groundbreaking or shocking, merely a good piece of highly watchable cinema. And a PG certificate at that! Now there's something you won't stumble across every day. 

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