Spartan

A cold, hard look into the intelligence services, their tactics and the necessary breaking of ethical barriers in order to fulfil the given task. Spartan is a Mamet film on a golden pedestal. Tough, concise, intelligent, fast-paced. In the overinflated and wonderfully cryptic dialogue, you won’t find a single phrase that descriptively explains what is happening. It’s as if you have suddenly found yourself among agents in the heat of an urgent case. Casual viewers won’t catch on. Mamet demands 100% of our attention, for which we are richly rewarded. The film holds us in suspense from start to finish and is breathtaking in its unpleasantly realistic depiction of the investigation and of the world of high-ranking patriots beyond the horizons of us mere mortals. Val Kilmer is perfect as the cold-blooded operative, and a major role is also played by the sophisticated camerawork and the clearly stylised action scenes without any discernible music. Settings alternate and the development of the events pushes the film forward, and the film’s overall dynamics are better than in Speed. Spartan is a brilliant thriller that is proud of its intelligence. After watching it, you will feel ill at ease not only because of human trafficking, but also because of politics in general. Four and a half stars. (08/26/2004)

Spartan is an unobtrusive movie that is easy to mistake for a regular B-grade production. Quite the opposite applies, however, and this turns out to be a raw, cold and unusual glimpse behind the scenes of secret ops. David Mamet wrote an outstanding screenplay and directed it well. It’s no miracle in visual terms (any episode of 24 has better production design - which is rather surprising in view of the budget in this picture), but this is ingeniously turned into an advantage in the form of almost intimate atmosphere, and that’s what’s most important. The intelligent plot certainly doesn’t underrate the viewer in any way and requires his full attention, which is rewarded by (not only) a story full of suspense. If it weren’t for the finale in the hangar with the lame and totally inappropriate explanatory monolog by the villain, then this would be flaw-free. It’s best not to read the distributor’s accompanying text, because it reveals almost the entire plot. Another big plus is Val Kilmer with his wonderfully minimalist performance, which couldn’t have possibly be better. Just a shame that all the others are slightly second-rate actors and therefore spoil things rather. All in all, however, Spartan is a very pleasant surprise. (02/15/2007)

It's boring. Fast-paced, quite raw, and straightforward, but I still didn't like it. A cold look into the world of secret services is a very interesting topic and almost always provides the basis for an interesting screenplay, but this time David Mamet didn't quite succeed. As a whole, it seemed quite clichéd, and throughout the entire time, I couldn't help but feel I've seen all of this before. It surprised me that Mamet also took on the role of director, but he clearly knows how to shoot action. The big, raw, and strongly realistic shootouts occasionally reminded me of Michael Mann's style. (10/23/2005)