- Title: The Spanish Prisoner
- IMDb: link
More than once David Mamet has tapped into the theme of a protagonist being fucked with and when you boil down all the twists and turns of The Spanish Prisoner that’s what you’re left with. Campbell Scott stars as an expert who is putting the finishing touches on a “process” (the details of which are kept vague). What we do know is the company he has created it for stands to make out huge and others, knowing of its worth, want it as well.
He’s taken on a company retreat with his boss (Ben Gazzara) whose unwillingness to get into the specifics about the bonus our character believes he deserves puts him on edge, a friend and lawyer for the company (Ricky Jay), and a young secretary (Rebecca Pidgeon) for grunt work who harbors an obvious crush on him. Over the course of the weekend Joe (Scott) meets a businessman (Steve Martin) whose reactions towards him run hot and cold but who is able to stoke Joe’s fears about the company screwing him over.
The Spanish Prisoner works better for me than House of Games, both of which center around a group of con men taking advantage of our protagonist. While I think in House of Games the character needs to be suspicious at some point earlier the film, The Spanish Prisoner is structured in a way that Joe’s suspicions work against him and keep him blinded to the long con he’s unwittingly walked willingly into.
In trademark Mamet fashion, the dialogue is first-rate taking a great deal of care not to provide too much information about “the process” given the legal and ethical reasons to keep it as secret as possible. At no point does the film go too far in obfuscating the MacGuffin at the heart of the film which, honestly, we can only take Joe’s word for it actually being profitable. The only place Mamet gets a bit too cute is with Jay’s character spouting off random quotes which nearly always feel like the character reading from a script. Despite that small criticism, The Spanish Prisoner is a wickedly fun mindfuck of a film that still works more than a quarter of a century later.
Watch the trailer
