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Critics Consensus: The Spanish Prisoner delivers just what fans of writer-director David Mamet expect: a smart, solidly constructed drama that keeps viewers guessing... and entertained along the way.
Critic Consensus: The Spanish Prisoner delivers just what fans of writer-director David Mamet expect: a smart, solidly constructed drama that keeps viewers guessing... and entertained along the way.
All Critics (60) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (53) | Rotten (7) | DVD (1)
There are enough twists and grown-up intrigue to keep one asking, "Hey, what's going on here?"
David Mamet has a penchant for sleight-of-hand thrillers, and The Spanish Prisoner is his craftiest to date.
The Spanish Prisoner shares with Glengarry Glen Ross a vision of life as a cosmic con game in which the victimizers feed the fantasies of the victims.
David Mamet's most consistently enjoyable film to date is a cool, typically clever con-trick drama packed with deliciously inventive twists that get ever more convoluted and unnerving as the plot proceeds.
There's something fresh, even restorative, in watching an American studio movie that doesn't treat the movie-going audience like a bunch of gullible marks.
Mamet brings more than a decade's worth of filmmaking experience to his latest project, and his skill as a director has improved considerably.
One exceedingly well-crafted piece of manipulation that keeps the audience strung along with every intricate turn of the plot.
The result is rather frustrating -- the story works but feels oddly hollow, almost like a con game itself.
This is probably Mamet's most purely enjoyable film since the gangster comedy Things Change.
A reminder that even intelligent films can be exercises of style over substance.
A substandard con flick that is surprisingly lightweight for a David Mamet film. In fact, it's so watered down that it feels more like a forgettable T.V. Movie-of-the-week.
In David Mamet's world nothing is what it seems and nobody talks like a real person. The stylized dialogue is not a flaw--it's part of the entertainment. Mamet keeps you and star Campbell Scott guessing until the final moments.
Good twisty drama.
Super Reviewer
Mamet takes a page from the Hitchcock hand book.
Mamet plays to be Hitchcock like he did in his first feature. The results are pretty good, a fine and engaging thriller that unravels its clues patiently and keeps you guessing what is going to happen next.
Exciting in parts, but completely filled with McGuffins. How does Joe not notice the book was switched? Why does he touch the murder weapon? Why does Susan pin that shamrock on him? It's all just to further the plot with canned suspense as it hurtles toward a deus ex machina ending.
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