The Spanish Prisoner

rated - Tepid

I suspect that David Mamet can do this sort of thing on his ear. It's a clever enough film, but not quite clever enough to convince me that he tried hard to do something special. It all seemed like an elaborate mental exercise to me. At the end I felt that I'd been mentally stimulated, and yet, I thought "So what? All very impressive, but what does it mean? And, more importantly, what does it matter?" We all know David Mamet can write short sentences and speciualises in unfinished utterances. Now he's directing as well, we are subjected to performances which value the written word over all other nuances. These are not real people, they're cyphers.

The best of the cyphers is Steve Martin - but then again, he really IS a cypher.

I did like the point Mamet makes about appearances being deceiving. But, being a lawyer, I was alert to that from the first. When I saw the security cameras I thought "Warning warning! Appearances are deceptive!" And sure enough, they are. But not quite deceptive enough...