“The Spanish Prisoner” is the kind of film that makes you glad you went...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 5, 2023

I realize this is a different kind of movie, one that demands to be plot-driven, not messy or discursive, but Mamet’s true gifts lie elsewhere.

| Original Score: B | Sep 1, 2022

A neo-noir thriller cut from a fine bolt of Hitchcockian gabardine laced with silken Chekhovian thread, “The Spanish Prisoner” gets its title from a passage presented in the third act that Mamet calls “the oldest con in the book.”

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 3, 2022

Mamet plays with our preconceived notions to keep us off-guard and unaware of the machinations unfolding beneath his façade of already questionable activities.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 9, 2019

There are enough twists and grown-up intrigue to keep one asking, "Hey, what's going on here?"

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 9, 2018

| Original Score: B- | Oct 2, 2009

One exceedingly well-crafted piece of manipulation that keeps the audience strung along with every intricate turn of the plot.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 1, 2009

The result is rather frustrating -- the story works but feels oddly hollow, almost like a con game itself.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 2, 2009

This is probably Mamet's most purely enjoyable film since the gangster comedy Things Change.

| Feb 2, 2009

David Mamet has a penchant for sleight-of-hand thrillers, and The Spanish Prisoner is his craftiest to date.

Full Review | Nov 20, 2008

The Spanish Prisoner shares with Glengarry Glen Ross a vision of life as a cosmic con game in which the victimizers feed the fantasies of the victims.

| Apr 27, 2007

David Mamet's most consistently enjoyable film to date is a cool, typically clever con-trick drama packed with deliciously inventive twists that get ever more convoluted and unnerving as the plot proceeds.

| Feb 9, 2006

A reminder that even intelligent films can be exercises of style over substance.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 3, 2004

A substandard con flick that is surprisingly lightweight for a David Mamet film. In fact, it's so watered down that it feels more like a forgettable T.V. Movie-of-the-week.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2003

In David Mamet's world nothing is what it seems and nobody talks like a real person. The stylized dialogue is not a flaw--it's part of the entertainment. Mamet keeps you and star Campbell Scott guessing until the final moments.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 11, 2003

A very impressive movie, The Spanish Prisoner entertains mightily.

| Original Score: B | May 22, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2003

An intriguing whodunit about murder and computer software, The Spanish Prisoner fails because for the most part, its actors aren't up to the task, and Mamet is unable to educate them properly.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 8, 2003

David Mamet's latest contraption has its satisfying moments, but the film is rarely more than just that: a contraption.

| Original Score: B | Jan 10, 2003

By the end, the story does overrun the characters; but we only know them in a superficial way, so it seems natural for them to be secondary to the plot.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 15, 2002