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Dull

Spartan is yet another in a seemingly endless line of films that start out decent enough, but then gets increasingly worse. A pretty interesting opening where the President's daughter is kidnapped, and Secret Service agent Kilmer tries to find her, is followed by an illogical and stupid middle and ending.Plotwise it never gets any more intricate than Kilmer fighting kidnappers and possibly corrupt fellow agents. There are some twists and turns, but as in the case of Mamet's previous film Heist, they fill no other function than being twists, making them pointless. The dialogue, which at first sounds a little strange and stilted, feels very minimal and to the point. This isn't something that you see (or rather - hear) in many films, and after a while you realise why. When everybody in the film talks exactly the same way, it gets ridiculous. There are no individual traits to be found - man, woman, and child - it all sounds the same.Spartan isn't funny, dramatic, exciting, or very entertaining. The acting is hard to judge since the script really doesn't allow for much acting. It's more a case of robots doing and saying what they're told. Nothing more, nothing less. The visuals go hand in hand with the acting, presenting a very sterile scenery in cold grey/blue colours. Not bad, but not very interesting either.Apparently, personal taste plays a very big part in who likes Spartan. Many find it to be a very good film, whereas I find the incredibly stupid ending as enough reason to discourage people from seeing it. [2/10]

An action thriller, with common sense

This action thriller "Spartan" is very interesting. Not too surprising, yet has a lot in store. Val Kilmer plays one tough soldier, who would not back down to anything. Just like "The Saint", only warmer. With a plot that get darker by the minute, and the action gets deeper as well. The rest of the cast are great too. Ed O'Neill(Al Bundy, fame and sorts) playing an investigator. He was always top notched in those characters. Willam H. Macy, always a winner with this one, it's such a shame that he has to play a shady character. Kilmer's character Scott his hardcore, straight forward and tough. No one would be smart enough to lie to him. When he does find the daughter, she would try her extremes for a cigarette, nice try, I'm not that kind of guy. These kind of advances would make any guy take serious actions. Not, Scott. He's cool as well. Going AWOL would be best if the government is behind the dirty work. However, lying low would be the best cover anytime! Great movie, great plot, who needs more? Rating 3 out of 5 stars!

Love it or hate it

I remember when I saw Ronin and I loved it, but all my friends I saw it with absolutely hated it. That's the way it is with David Mamet films. He has a very unique style, and some people are really into it, and others find it very confusing.Spartan is no different. Mamet drops you right into the middle of the story and lets you figure it out. And the story is a good one, and by the end, you realize just how many twists and turns you completely didn't notice along the way. The characters run through the film, and only towards the end do you begin to understand their own motivations.Val Kilmer is stellar in this movie. He does a great job with the Mamet diologue, which is very brief, staccato, and repetitious. That's part of the beauty. The lines are few and not very... illustrative, so the actors have to put a lot of performance into the words themselves. It works.If you like Mamet movies, this one will not disappoint. If you hate his movies, avoid this one. If you've never seen one of his movies, this one is a nice place to start. As for me, I'd give this movie a 7-8/10. I suggest you see it.

Watch the trailer instead, you'll save 1:39 of your life

We watched the trailer *after* the film, and it was hilarious how it encapsulated the entire plot, much better than the film itself. (...) There could have been a very interesting treatment of what happened next, but instead we saw the end credits. Single-threaded storyline (...), characters and dialog that manage to be both cliche and unrealistic, lack of development makes many of the characters interchangable. In fact, the running commentary by Kilmer reveals that even *he* didn't know who he was playing. We rented this based upon Roger Ebert's "two thumbs way up" review prominently displayed on the box at Blockbuster. I'll never make the mistake of trusting anything he says ever again. He's either senile or on the payroll. Very very little action, most of time is wasted watching "managers" in an office scene. Many long boring actionless, dialogless, scenes such as the minute long shot of a helicopter flying from some forgettable place to another. Thankfully the movie was so easy to mock, no need to wait very long between laughs, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. Eventually the fast forward button was our best friend, my rule of thumb was to skip over all of the many scenes with Kilmer alone in the frame - they were all slow and pointless. There were maybe 2 or 3 small actors who actually acted, but the principals were flat and emotionless, devoid of personality. Sad because the basic premise has promise, it's just that Mamet avoided each and every potentially interesting aspect of the story. (...)

A twisted kidnapping tale courtesy of David Mamet

I wish I had known that "Spartan" was written and directed by David Mamet before I started watching it because then I would have warmed up to the movie a lot more quickly. Doing so was a problem for me because this film pushed a couple of my buttons. First, it involves the kidnapping of the president's daughter. My complain is not that this has been happening a lot (e.g., "The West Wing"), but that doing these stories at a time when the sitting president has daughters and there are ample reasons for terrorists to make them targets might be tempting fate too much. Second, it also touches on the idea of Secret Service incompetence and culpability in political shenanigans. I get the feeling that the Secret Service in most Hollywood movies has replaced what would have been psychotic Vietnam vets a generation ago (and sadistic Nazis the generation before that). I just tend to find such portrayals rather insulting to those people whose job is to throw themselves in front of bullets.

But even given the hole that "Spartan" started out with in my eyes this is quite a compelling film. With Mamet things are never simple and the chief attraction here is how the film's hero, an agent named Scott (Val Kilmer), tries to catch up with the events that are unraveling at warp speed involving the president's daughter (Kristen Bell), and unraveling is most decidedly the operative word in this story. I probably should have started counting the conventions of this genre that Mamet is playing with in "Spartan," especially with regards to the supporting roles of Curtis (Derek Luke), Jackie Black (Tia Texada), and Stoddard (William H. Macy), who come and go in the most interesting ways. Scott is an interesting character because he is almost a sanctioned loose cannon, who will put on his thinking cap and do whatever it takes to get the job done (even if it means doing whatever it takes to get the job done).

Of course as much fun as a David Mamet plot is there is also the distinctive dialogue that he gives his characters to speak. If you are hoping for lots of exposition to explain what is going on, then you are in the wrong movie. Add to that the fact that just because somebody says something does not mean they mean it. There is a lot of guesswork involved here, not just for the characters but also the audience, because of what we see and here. But that is the road we expect to travel when Mamet is out guide and in that regard "Spartan" does not disappoint. It might prove too cerebral for most aficionados of the action genre, but then there are plenty of such brain dead films out there that we should be allowed to enjoy this one in peace.

cryptic messages

Roger and Ebert loved this movie. I cannot tell you why. Val Kilmer plays a secret agent in charge of rescuing the President's kidnapped daughter. Derek Luke is kind of like a partner. On their way, they discover that this was a conspiracy that started at the top, in the White House. The story for this movie was actually pretty decent. It was the dialogue that I had a problem with. The lines between the different characters was so bizarre, and so cryptic, you often found that you had lost track of the important moments because you were too busy trying to figure out what the hell they were trying to say to one another. One of my favorites was "You gotta get me to the tall corn". It sounded very Dora the Explorer-like.

Heist and Spartan

Some points...1. Mamet's films are all con jobs, his characters, pacing and dialogue constantly defying audience expectation.2. Watch how characters remain silent when we expect their actions to be explained, random ambiguity is used to combat audience expectation, important plot points aren't dwelled upon and dialogue is used to mask and misdirect.3. Mamet continues his trend of casting comedians in serious roles.4. Mamet's films seem so familiar, so generic, but watch how he skews everything just a little slightly.5. It seems unlikely that David Mamet, one of the most admired American playwrights, will ever become a great filmmaker. But that's not his ambition, Mamet clearly more interested in professional mastery than in the production of masterpieces.6. As usual with Mamet, "Heist" and "Spartan" feature an antagonistic bond between mentor and protégé. Mamet's younger characters always strive for the professionalism represented by the older character. Mamet claims to search for this same professionalism in his own work.7. Both "Heist" and "Spartan" end with unimaginative shoot outs. Such routine endings seem common in Mamet's work. He sees his films as playful games. A series of cons which must be arbitrarily terminated.8. Mamet constantly plays with the artificiality of storytelling, but while other formalists play with both images and text, Mamet remains stuck on words, his visuals consistently weak.8/10 - "Heist" and "Spartan" are two excellent thrillers, written with a sense of economy and masculinity reminiscent of Sam Fuller. Approached as playful word games, his films are lots of fun.

How downhill Mamet has gone...

Where oh where has Mamet gone? We have 'The Spanish Prisoner', helper on 'Ronin', and the superlative 'Glengarry Glen Ross', and then we get crap like 'Heist', and now.. 'Spartan'. This movie was so clicheed, so contrived, so construed, it pained me.**Spoilers ahead**There are so many problems with this movie, too numerous to count. The script is very typically Mamet, and by that, nowadays, I mean completely unrealistic and obviously a far better screenplay than it is a movie. Some of the dialog is ludicrous, and stupidly cryptic. One such scene finds Val Kilmer and Derek Luke exchanging pointless conversation, and Kilmer says to Derek that 'you want to stay out of the desert', with no explanation of why. I'm thinking to myself 'oh they'll come back to that later...', and guess what? Later in the movie Kilmer is speaking to the daughter of the president, and tells her that American tobacco can be smelled in the desert, and that's why you stay out of the desert. Snore. Really. Snore.There are also a ton of situational coincidences and unrealistic happenings scattered throughout. Another scene finds Kilmer trapped by a sniper, and in a matter of literally a second he manages to remove his jacket, put it on a 'useful scarecrow located nearby' and then throw the body infront of the sniper's scope to fake his death. Then you have the matter of Luke finding a tiny earring by the beach, and then not showing it to Kilmer the second he found it. Also, we have the completely stupid dialog between Kilmer and Luke, where Luke turns to Kilmer, after being shot, and tells him 'I saw the sign' (referring to Laura Newton's 'Picasso' signature. Kilmer doesn't understand that, and Luke doesn't tell Kilmer what he meant until later in the movie. You just want to stand up and shout 'for the love of..........!' At the end of the movie, it's obvious who's going to live and who's going to die. The female sergeant's death is so predictable, and the ending doesn't leave anyone (at least noone who watched it with me) particularly satisfied.I think this movie might/could have looked great on paper. Snappy dialog and fast moving, but as a movie it's a shambles, and just plain hilarious. So scripted you can't help but giggle.

A Complete Waste of Time - BERWARE SPOILERS!

I just don't understand all of the positive reviews of this movie. Val Kilmer's performance is so over-exagerrated, and so is the rest of the cast, especially the young lady who is begging to be put on the mission.

As far as the story... who couldn't figure out that it's the presidents daughter who's been nabbed? Doesn't the secret service's involvement tip us off? I get the impression that I was supposed to "GASP" when we learned this bit of so-called suspense. I actually laughed because I told my son a half hour before that it's got to be the Prez's daughter. And the whole scene where the Prez's daughter exposes herself and is told that she can't smoke American cigarettes in the middle of the city because their enemy would smell it and know just where to find them, is a total farce and is so laughable. Talk about the bad effects of second hand smoke. I could pick a dozen more things that aggravated me about this film but they aren't worth remembering. With all of the other "twist's" that were supposed to be planted throughout, I was just busy saying, "Come on!"

My 16 year old son and I always talk about movies after we've viewed them, and I was surprised that he agreed with me on so many bad points about this film, even though we disagree about many things.

I am always leary about any action film from Warner Brothers, and even though they do release an occasional good one, this is just another contrived WB release, and one that I would never recommend to anyone who enjoys intelligent, well crafted films films. I am also really ashamed of Ebert & Roeper's Two Thumbs Up on this film and I'm so glad that I didn't see this film at the theater.

"Two Thumbs Down. WAY WAY DOWN!" Jim & Jim

I thought it was first rate

This is tightly written and edited down to the final shot. It is flab-free, and if your belief must be suspended here and there, the entertainment quotient makes it worth it. Val Kilmer kills as the super SS agent, searching for the daughter of, the president? We are never told outright. That's one of the charms here. A great way to spend two hours. Watch this.

Crippled lines

Again I have to wonder what it is between me and films by David Mamet. Everybody seems to stand so much in awe of him, what great dialogue he writes, how fascinating his films are and so on. And when I watch these films then I wonder what they talked about. Because the dialogues I hear are clipped, they sound like a machine gun fire. Dadada. Dadada. There is no rhythm in them, they are short and without any melody. The lines sound crippled to me. What exactly do other people like about that? Many people think he is writing the way people talk. But no, that's not true. Nobody speaks in a staccato way like he writes these lines. Or is this a cultural thing and I'm just too European/ German?Spartan now was like so many other Mamet films (excluding Glengarry Glen Ross and State and Main, the only ones I liked so far). The film starts and I instantly have the feeling that the film has started a quarter of an hour ago. I'm thrown into the middle of a story. Nothing gets explained, I don't understand what is happening, the characters are not properly introduced, even their names very often are not mentioned. The name of William H Macy's character appears in the last line he says, or something. I would call this bad scriptwriting or at least very careless scriptwriting. The author should care about his audience. He knows what he is writing about, but the audience don't. Please, explain to the viewers, otherwise they are at a complete loss what to make with the film. And what about the title? What is it supposed to mean?Till the end I couldn't say what Val Kilmer's character was, what he worked for, where he came from... are the viewers not worth to get to know this? Or didn't the author himself know that? This character, like most other characters as well, lingers in a mist I can't see through. The consequence is that I don't like the film, because to me it doesn't make sense. Maybe David Mamet is too good and too intellectual and I'm too stupid? Or can't he just write? Whatever it is, I rate the film 3 out of 10. 1 for William H Macy, 1 for David Paymer (Did you miss him? His role was short enough...) and 1 for Val Kilmer. Maybe he understood his own character.

Woolly Mamet, or this Spartan is rotten to the core

It's official. The Yanks are still refighting their on-ice battle with the Russkies in "Miracle", but the Arabs have now taken over from the Russians as the "evil empire" in the American psyche, as reflected not only in Washington but in Hollywood. "Spartan" joins the recently released "Hidalgo" as a film that trades in broad ethnic stereotypes (can you say "racial profiling"?) of the Arab world."Spartan" sins even more grievously than "Hidalgo". At least in "Hidalgo", the Arabs were only cut-throat horse thieves. In "Spartan", they are white slavers based in Dubai and out to kidnap beautiful young blond blue-eyed American girls. And this time, purely by accident, their victim is the daughter of the President himself.Much has been made of Mamet's cryptic dialogue in "Spartan". Cryptic? The constant references to "the girl" and "the father" are about as mysterious as the Wizard of Oz after Toto pulled aside the curtain. I mean, really, the Secret Service is on the case. How many girls and their fathers warrant that kind of expertise?Only at the end of the film did I understand where Mamet was going with his White House vs. Arab rhetoric. He seems to be saying (in coded language) that the lies emanating from the President's office are, in their own way, a kind of terrorism, every bit as dangerous as 9/11 to our democratic way of life.I only wish Mamet hadn't pandered to the current environment of fearmongering by making the Arabs the villain of the piece. This Spartan left a sour taste in my mouth.

Quirky Thriller from Mamet's Pen

Alfred Hitchcock once referred to what he called a refrigerator movie: that is, a film that once you viewed, if you went back to discuss plot points, you would discover one, if not many, holes in which certain things which took place could not have under logical circumstances, but nevertheless made for an enjoyable film.David Mamet, no stranger to films that have some neat plot twists and ingenious thrillers, writes and directs this entertaining political thriller involving the disappearance/kidnapping of the President's daughter and how Scott (Val Kilmer), an aggressive and unorthodox marine operative, is assigned the task to bring her back unharmed. Along the way he discovers that her kidnapping has some ulterior motives which are not political, and nothing in the way of his investigation appears to be what it is.SPARTAN is a very low-key thriller in the style of NORTH BY NORTHWEST but closer to "24" in which the plot moves along quite fast, giving the viewer only the necessary information at that given moment, and dropping only the slightest of hints that progressively paint a wider canvas as to what shape the story will take. Never do we know more than Scott knows, and that is important in many ways, but also leaves for some implausibility here and there since it relies on twists and turns. Of course, once the film is over, you can go back and see exactly where Mamet was taking you all along, but even then, a Mamet thriller is always a clever thriller.Solid performances throughout, newcomers and experienced actors hold their own. Tia Texada and Derek Luke both take up more screen time than any of the supporting players and appear in crucial moments. Kristin Bell, known for her series "VERONICA MARS", makes an appearance late in the film as Laura Newton, the President's daughter, and her pat lines speak volumes about her character. Of course, you'll have to watch it to see what I mean.

A Wonderful Diversion

I picked this movie up while randomly flipping through the DVD section of Barnes & Noble. From the writer of Glengarry Glen Ross and starring Val Kilmer, I figured that it was a safe bet. My expectations were simple: Seeing Val be cool in various situations. I wasn't disappointed.I enjoyed the quite realistic dialogue among different secret service and law enforcement agencies. There was a sense of professionalism to each of the roles that I found refreshing. And of course Val plays a wonderful Byronic Hero. He's determined and practical.As for the plot, it kept me actively interested by the way it lead me where I wanted to go. I've read some harsh reviews by others, and they have good points. I feel like on any other day I may have joined in with them in dissecting the script and direction. However, tonight I was in the mood for something satisfying, and Spartan fit the bill.I'll watch Spartan again soon, when I need a wonderful diversion.

Comments about dialogue

9 out of 10; I obviously liked the movie. But it's precisely the Mamet dialogue that knocks it back a notch from 10 ...I didn't know it was a Mamet film when it came on cable, I'm just an old-time fan of Kilmer. (Since Real Genius ... "When can I do something with you, or, more to the point, TO you?" ;-) But having seen Mamet's other stuff, I knew who's work I was watching less than 10 minutes in. (And was sure of it when I saw the scene when Kilmer first enters the beachhouse and talks to the person he meets -- the dialogue there is the worst in the movie.) Luckily, that's an extremely brief moment, and frankly, given the quality of the rest of the film, saying that is the worst part is really praising the film with faint damnation.Lastly, the way they resisted such easy, obvious chances for shots of female breasts makes it even MORE alluring. (My wife didn't mind watching Val change his shirt, go figure.)

Good story, well told. Rises above the action film genre.

This thriller was written and directed by David Mamet which makes it rise above the genre in respect to dialog and plot. It's tightly written and well acted with constant twists and turns. There's violence too. But this is a good story, well told. Val Kilmer stars and all the actors do well. Of course it's not believable but it did hold my interest. And the plot is as fresh as today's headlines involving the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and the White House. There are also some Middle Eastern kidnappers and a satisfying positive conclusion. It's put together in a tight package and will appeal to action/adventure fans or anyone else just needing a fast paced film for a bit of escape.

Good on some levels, not on others

Spartan is a very well made film, and is that rare film in which the protagonist whom we are supposed to identify with is a flawed hero. He seems to have a genuine concern for the girl he is supposed to save from the international prostitution/slave trade, but his behavior otherwise, particularly in his interrogation style, is appalling.Spartan has some great suspense scenes, good action without any silly effects or unrealistic dance-fighting, and everyone does a good job in their roles. Kristen Bell adds some sensuality to her character and does a great job of playing the neglected president's daughter.There are other films that do a much better job of working the dark element, but as a whole, this is worth watching.

Great Movie

After seeing the previews on tv for a while, I was wondering where Val Kilmer has been lately. I mean the last time I saw him was in Batman, I bevlieve. But this movie was really good, I had the chance to see the advanced screening of it from tickets I got from hangin out one night, it was really a good movie. The entire theatre was full and packed with people that wasn't sure about this movie, but I think everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. I think Val Kilmer's choice of movies are extremely important to him and by him taking this step with Spartan, I'd say it's a good BIG step for his career. I would recommend this movie for anyone looking for a great thriller action movie, I'd see it again.

Mamet's best script since Ronin

I'm not a fan of all of Mamet's work. The acclaim for House of Games, I think, was not entirely warranted. Spartan is another story. The writing makes what would otherwise be a fairly decent political thriller into a masterpiece. It's his best work since Ronin, and in fact very reminiscent of that under-appreciated script. Val Kilmer and the supporting cast are outstanding. Macy fans, however, should know that his role is much smaller than the movie's marketing would suggest.But a word of warning: Spartan requires total attention. Putting the subtitles on doesn't hurt either, otherwise you might miss the finer nuances to Mamet's outstanding script.

Where's The Girl? Who CARES?!

Seriously, this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And I've loved some of Mamet's other films.There isn't one minute of this movie that doesn't completely suck. The dialog is so unlike the way people ever really speak, it makes you wonder if Mamet has ever met a real person. The characters uniformly use terms and phrases that are obviously supposed to sound quippy, clever, smart and cool. But it all comes off as the most unrealistic pile of convoluted nonsense you've ever heard.After a few minutes of watching this movie, it started becoming one of those films where it was so bad that I started to enjoy making fun of it. Almost all the characters were exactly the same person with different crappy lines. They all used precisely the same type of repetitive language, constantly calling each other "baby" and being coldly snide."Where's the girl?" was repeated so many times that it quickly became a joke to my boyfriend and I. And that wasn't the only thing repeated in the movie. Everything anyone said was annoyingly said twice.There was nothing engaging about the plot, either. It's pathetically Hollywood in the most cliché' sense. Government conspiracy, secret ops, kidnapped girl, mean Arabs, etc. And all tied together with the efficiency of a monkey on acid.The acting, too, was completely, terribly wooden. But given the HORRIBLE script, you can't blame much of it on the actors.I kind of want to meet David Mamet so I can kidnap him and force him to apologize for making Spartan.