The Spanish Prisoner

A film by David Mamet (USA, 1997),

with Campbell Scott, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ben Gazzara and Steve Martin.

Joseph Ross has just discovered the "process", an invention that will enable his company to make a lot of money. But a gold mine is always coveted by more than one party...

"Manipulations, power games, deceits, etc..." or something alike, announce the subtitles. Oh YES: deceit indeed... It took me about 5 minutes to find out who was part of the set-up and ALL the rest of the film to check out how predictable every event was! The Spanish Prisoner is a film that you should recommend to someone you want to say to: "See the character? I think you're as thick and slow as he is!" In short, it's highly predictable, often absurd and overall annoying. I've seen better TV films than that, not to mention The Usual Suspects, Masquerade or The Game, which were far subtler in their approaches of a manipulation. Seriously, would you say to strangers you've never met that you've just discovered a top secret process but can't tell anything about it? Or would you, as you come upon the dead body that has a knife -YOUR knife actually- in its heart, would you therefore touch the knife, soak your hands into the blood AND leave your glasses on the table -maybe you see better without? In addition to the poor hero's amazing foolishness, it's Mamet's work itself that proves to be far too demonstrative as the director seems to hold the viewers' hands to force them into the set-up on the one hand and into the disclosure of the very same set-up on the other hand. In conclusion, the manipulation is right there, in the catch-phrase. And you can't even sue the distributor for misleading advertising since it's all true: there is manipulation. But not in the film, in real life: you've just paid to watch a rubbish film. Those marketing dudes are really too smart!...

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