1. Plot

2. Cast

3. Dialogue

4. Reception

5. References

6. External links

• Ben Gazzara
• Felicity Huffman
• Ricky Jay
• Steve Martin
• Rebecca Pidgeon
• Campbell Scott}}

• Jasmine Productions Inc.
• Jean Doumanian Productions
• Magnolia Films
• Sweetland Films

The Spanish Prisoner is a 1997 American neo-noir suspense film, written and directed by David Mamet and starring Campbell Scott, Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ben Gazzara, Felicity Huffman and Ricky Jay. The plot entails a story of corporate espionage conducted through an elaborate confidence game.

In 1999 the film was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay but lost out to Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight.^[2]

Plot

Corporate engineer Joe Ross has invented a potentially lucrative and secret financial process. While on a retreat on the island of St. Estèphe, he meets a wealthy stranger, Jimmy Dell, and attracts the interest of one of the company's new secretaries, Susan Ricci.

Jimmy wants to introduce Joe to his sister, an Olympic-class tennis player, in New York and asks him to deliver a package to her. Susan sits near Joe on the airplane back to New York, converses with him about how "you never know who anybody is," and talks about unwitting drug mules. Realizing that he doesn't really know Jimmy, and afraid the package might contain something illegal, Joe opens it on the plane, finding only a 1939 edition of the book Budge on Tennis, and accidentally rips the cover in the process. Once home, Joe buys another copy of the book, to give to Jimmy's sister, and keeps the torn one at his office.

Jimmy suggests that Joe's company and his boss, Mr. Klein, might not give Joe fair compensation for his work. The flirtatious Susan also keeps making suggestions that one never knows whom to trust. Jimmy invites Joe to dinner with Jimmy's sister, and they meet at Dell's place. While at his computer and chatting about business, Jimmy asks if Joe has a Swiss bank account, and finding the answer is no, opens one for him with the token balance of 15 Swiss francs, pretending that it is all an easy lark. Taking him to dinner at a club requiring membership, Jimmy has Joe sign a certificate to join. Over dinner, he advises Joe to consult legal counsel about his position in the company regarding the Process; Jimmy offers his own lawyer, telling Joe to bring the only copy of the Process to their meeting.

Joe learns that the sister does not actually exist and that Jimmy is really a con artist who is attempting to steal Joe's work. Joe contacts Pat McCune, a woman he met on the island who Susan told him was an FBI agent, and whose business card Susan kept. He is enlisted in a sting operation. When Jimmy Dell never shows up for the planned meeting, to his horror, Joe learns that McCune is actually part of Jimmy's con game. His Process is stolen.

Joe attempts to explain what happened to his employer and the police, but his story sounds far-fetched. The con has made it appear that he has sold his Process to the Japanese. The Swiss bank account that Jimmy opened for him makes it look as though he is hiding assets, and the certificate he signed to join the club turns out to be a request for political asylum in Venezuela, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. The police show Joe that Jimmy's apartment is a mere façade and that the club's members-only room was nothing but a restaurant that was closed. Joe is also framed for the murder of the company lawyer, George Lang.

On the run, Joe reconnects with Susan, who says she believes his story and continues to express a romantic interest in him. Joe remembers that the hotel on the island maintains video surveillance, which could prove that Jimmy Dell was there. Susan takes him to the airport in order to fly to the island. On the way to the airport, Susan convinces him to drive to Boston (to elude a manhunt).

At the airport in Boston Susan gives Joe a camera bag, which unbeknownst to him contains a gun, and an airplane ticket to the island. Before passing through security, Joe realizes that Jimmy left his fingerprints on the original tennis book Joe was to deliver. He leaves the airport with Susan, still not realizing that she is working against him. They purchase ferry tickets to return home. While Susan leaves to call Mr Klein to inform him about the tennis book, Joe attempts to board the ferry with the plane ticket only to find out the ticket destination is actually Venezuela.

Once on board the ferry, Jimmy comes to kill Joe, seemingly alone except for Susan and a couple of Japanese tourists. The final step of this con is going to be Joe's death, made to appear as a suicide. Jimmy suddenly is hit with a tranquilizer dart shot by one of the tourists, who are actually US Marshals who have been monitoring Jimmy's con. They reveal that Joe's boss, Mr. Klein, was behind the entire con because he wanted to keep all the profits for himself. Jimmy and Susan are taken to jail.

Cast

• Campbell Scott as Joe Ross
• Steve Martin as Julian "Jimmy" Dell
• Rebecca Pidgeon as Susan
• Ben Gazzara as Mr. Klein
• Ricky Jay as George Lang
• Felicity Huffman as FBI Agent McCune
• Ed O'Neill as FBI Team Leader
• Takeo Matsushita as U.S. Marshal
• Keiko Seiko as U.S. Marshal

Dialogue

David Mamet is famous for his dialogues, which are characterized by incomplete sentences, foul language, stutters, and interruptions; it is known as "Mamet-speak".^{[3][4][5][6][7]}

Here, Roger Ebert observes, "His characters often speak as if they're wary of the world, afraid of being misquoted, reluctant to say what's on their minds: As a protective shield, they fall into precise legalisms, invoking old sayings as if they're magic charms. Often they punctuate their dialogue with four-letter words, but in The Spanish Prisoner there is not a single obscenity, and we picture Mamet with a proud grin on his face, collecting his very first PG rating".^[8]

Chris Grunden of Film Journal International adds, "David Mamet's new film features the writer-director's trademark staccato dialogue, but, as in his earlier House of Games, the film's stylized language (which can become wearying in some Mamet scripts) is matched with a confidence-scam plot that's almost dizzyingly complex, and is completely absorbing from start to finish".^[10]

Reception

Chris Grunden of Film Journal International (comparing some points of the movie to Strangers on a Train and The Man Who Knew Too Much) wrote, "Somewhere Alfred Hitchcock is smiling, for The Spanish Prisoner is the most deliciously labyrinthine homage to the master of suspense in recent years... Campbell Scott elicits just the right amount of youthful vanity, which gradually crumbles as he gets increasingly entrapped in the scheme to play him for a fool. Martin's supremely cool, calculatingly menacing turn as the enigmatic Jimmy Dell neatly contrasts Scott's golden-boy image. The strong supporting cast features fine work... Barbara Tulliver's editing is crisp - the pacing never flags for a moment - and Carter Burwell's score is fabulously moody and evocative".^[10]

Reviewer Paul Tatara, on the other hand, criticized the film for using well-worn plot mechanisms, "stiff characterizations and ridiculous line readings".^[13]

References

External links

• {{IMDb title|id=0120176|title=The Spanish Prisoner}}
• {{Rotten Tomatoes|spanish_prisoner}}
• {{Mojo title|spanishprisoner}}

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