The Spanish Prisoner

The Spanish Prisoner (1997)

Perhaps it's a bit redundant to see the title three times before you see the plot description. I'm still working out these photoblogging kinks. Just wait 'til the day I attempt vlogging. Anyway . . .

Brief: Joe Ross (Campbell Scott) is flown, along with George Lang (Ricky Jay) and Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon), to the Caribbean island of St. Estephe in order to attend a meeting about the top-secret "process" he invented. While there, he is befriended by Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), a wealthy business man who asks for a favour. Joe complies and quickly finds himself further and further alienated from his colleagues and drawn to Jimmy, a man whose own dubious nature Joe begins to suspect.

I'd tell you to watch the preview to make that clearer, but I watched the preview and thought it was about money laundering, which it is very much not. As usual, I was trying to give you a description without giving too much away. The movie has a fairly long set up, so that made it a bit trickier.

What I love about this film, what I love about all of David Mamet's films, is the innate lyricism to his scripts. There's a rhythm to them that draws you in, lulling and jarring you at appropriate moments. I think that's what makes Pidgeon so well suited to his work. She's the only one who could endear the audience while delivering the odd lines Mamet throws at her.

As much as I always enjoy that work, I didn't find Mamet's story thrilling so much as confusing. Mind you, I was thrown a bit by the lack of money laundering, and I believe I recovered enough to simply not understand. I like that you never find out what the process is, but I don't like that you have absolutely no sense at all of anything that goes on in that secure building. Oh, well.

As for Scott, well, I don't know what to think about him. There's nothing wrong with his acting, and I found his Joe to be over-the-top most of the time in his sense of self-possession. Maybe that's just the way he was written. In any case, as he is the so-called patron saint of the indie film, I suppose I should lay off him.

I saw this movie more than a week ago, and I've been struggling with reviewing it ever since. The truth is, I have nothing in particular to say about it. I didn't really strike me one way or the other except for how confusing it was with all the crossing, double, and triple crossing in the second act. By the third it's all pretty much sorted, so there's less to worry about it.

All in all, I've come to expect a little bit more from Mamet. B-