Spartan Review
by Edward Howell (jhowell AT uci DOT edu)March 22nd, 2004
Spartan B+
Reviewer: Edward Howell
This film was made with great talent and skill but in the end the story is not believable. Val Kilmer is good as the professional brought in to find the president's daughter after she goes missing. The film is shot in an edgy take no prisoner's manner reminiscent of David Fincher or Richard Donner's Conspiracy Theory. William Macy is excellent and Ed O'Neil and Derek Luke are good too. Like Oliver Stone movies I see a David Mamet movie regardless of what the word of mouth is because they always seem to raise the bar. It's too bad that Oliver didn't have David write the script for his JFK. So what's not to like to like about Spartan? Well the problem is as Ridley Scott once said (it's) "the "G-damn story." A white slave ring out of Dubai kidnaps the president's daughter while attending Harvard because her security detail was left light handed when the president was in town philandering. Give me a break. Also the kidnappers don't know she was the president's daughter because she was in a pay for sex bar and just had her hair cut and dyed? The other girls would spot her instantly in such a bar. The president's handlers decide she is expendable because she was going to accuse her father of infidelity during the upcoming election? When a professor and student die in a sailing accident the the presidents handlers decide to let the daughter be sold into some sort of sex slavery in Yemen and issue a news release identifying her as the dead student drowned with her professor. Such a cover up would be leaked in ten minutes. Even the Kennedy family saw the remnants of John; his wife and sister law's body to make sure. What about the real girls family? Who in Yemen has the money to import sex slaves from Harvard? What Yemeni in his right mind would want, given the cost, the cultural differences and the maintenance problems a kidnapped Harvard coed for a sex slave?. Who in Yemen could afford such an undertaking? So thats the problem. Wag the Dog was a success because it was a satire and a comedy. This is supposed to be a serious story. Mr. Mamet asks us to suspend our disbelief beyond our ability to do so. That's why when the screen fades to black and we begin to think about what we saw we have lingering sense of dissatisfaction. Even so the movie is worth seeing but I wish Mr. Mamet would write a script about the current administration. I'm sure he could come up with something far more plausible and sinister. Remember truth is stranger than fiction.
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