Arts & Entertainment
 

'Spartan' doesn't live up to expectations

Mamet's directorial style too intellectual for sub-par performances in plodding thriller

By Ray Hafner
The Daily Cougar

What on earth is David Mamet doing making geopolitical thrillers with political underpinnings? Best known for clever satire like Wag the Dog or smart heist flicks like, well, Heist, Mamet usually brings a sharp sense of intellectual style to any project. But that intellect is in short supply throughout almost all of Spartan as Val Kilmer desperately searches for the president's kidnapped daughter.

A hokey plot could be excused, though; that never stopped James Bond. But what really drags Spartan down is its plodding pace and Mamet's dialogue, which aims far too high for this movie and takes itself much too seriously.

Kilmer plays a Marine or secret service agent or both. It's never made clear. In fact the entire first half of the story takes its time coming into focus. The movie doesn't even bother to confirm its the president's daughter who's kidnapped. Mamet has never been one for specifics. As a writer and director he'd rather work on the bigger, in this case spiritual, issues against the backdrop of the action. So it's never been crucial to set the locale.

But with Kilmer's character darting around between Boston, Florida and Dubai on the trail of sex slaves, it actually becomes important to set the time and place. Mamet doesn't bother, and so the audience is left to wonder.

Kilmer doesn't help offering a performance so wooden the set should have been besieged with beavers. Add up his acting and Mamet's overdone dialogue and Spartan becomes a real turkey. "I ain't a planner. I ain't a thinker. I never wanted to be," Kilmer lectures during one particularly bad scene. He ain't much of an actor either.

The plot is brilliantly retarded and supposes that the president of the United States would rather see his daughter sold into the international sex trade than risk possibly exposing his affair and thereby losing re-election. It goes even further by positing that said president would then try and kill his daughter for the same reasons than get her back. Even the fiercest Bush critics doubt he'd try that. Well, maybe not.

Then again, this president has managed to raise a daughter who offers to prostitute herself for a cigarette.

This sort of cynicism has a certain appeal for the intellectual middle class, which views the powerful as black-hearted wolves who care for nothing but power. 

But it doesn't really square with reality. Even in a movie this plot seems obscene. 

Helping Kilmer along the way are two Marines, played by Tia Texada and Derek Luke. Both do decent jobs, but there really is no helping this film. 

Moviegoers expecting smart Mamet will walk out feeling conned and those wanting action will come out bored. 

Spartan

Rated: R

Starring: Val Kilmer, William H. Macy

Warner Bros. Pictures

The verdict: Let Michael Bay handle these scripts, Mamet. Get started on The Spanish Prisoner 2.
 

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