Spartan ('04) 2004, Rated R Warner Brothers

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A Warner Brothers film. Written and directed by David Mamet; starring Val Kilmer and Derek Luke. Released to DVD on June 15, 2004.

Never have I received as many complaints and ugly e-mails as I did about the article I wrote about the original Meet the Parents, a small, independent film shot in Chicago during the early ‘90’s.  The glut of hate mail I fielded didn’t really have anything to do with director Greg Glienna’s film per se, it had to do with the fact that I opened the article discussing the exchange I’d had with Glienna about the positive points of killing a dog on-screen.  Missed in all the hand-wringing was the actual point of the conversation: movies that feature unpopular and sometimes savage glimpses of reality often have a bite and an edge to them that can significantly impact the overall tone of the project.  Writer/director David Mamet’s latest film, the political thriller Spartan, is one film that effectively separates itself from the recent spate of shallow, dolled-up, Hollywood entries into the genre by delivering a no-holds-barred look into the inner-workings of a take-no-prisoners Washington DC.

Val Kilmer stars in Spartan as a clever and industrious Marine officer named Robert Scott.  When the president’s daughter, Laura Newton (Kristen Bell) is kidnapped from her college campus, Scott is the first outsider to be called in to assist the Secret Service in their investigation.

While Spartan’s plot could have easily been turned into a light-weight Ashley Judd or Tommy Lee Jones movie (and was turned into a light-weight Mandy Moore flick called Chasing Liberty), Mamet has a much different agenda in mind.  He takes his camera into a world where its residents play for keeps, thinking nothing of taking an innocent life should it best serve their purposes, and the characters are given very few second chances.  Spartan’s tone is set very early on.  Quickly hitting the pavement to strike up any leads he can find, Scott and his Secret Service comrades visit a local escort service where Newton was spotted earlier.   Meeting with the agency’s madam, Scott asks her where the girl is (it’s the most oft repeated phrase in Spartan and used almost as a mantra for the film).  When the madam announces that she knows her rights and wants a lawyer, Scott grabs the woman by her neck and tells her that she is leaving the room with her life or the information he wants.  Seconds later, the madam gives Scott the phone number he is looking for. 

The key to the film’s success in this realm lies with Kilmer.  Actors are often called upon to supply magnanimous performances and to give emotion to their characters, but they aren’t often called upon to provide the atmosphere for the entire movie.  And Kilmer is saddled with just such a task.  On screen in every scene of the film, it was imperative that Kilmer give Scott not only his rugged demeanor, but his practiced and forbidding nature as well.  When Scott threatens a suspect, Mamet needed there to be a palpable tension hanging over the scene.  Kilmer does this with ease, creating in Scott a character with a dark side that is rarely seen but constantly felt.

Unlike some of the other political thrillers of late, Mamet takes great pains to throw the viewer into the midst of Spartan’s story with little in the way of explanation or warm up.  Absent are all lines of dialogue with blatantly expository purposes; “Oh, hello, Bill, my boss and brother to my best friend, Sidney.  How are you?”  It’s unusual in its own right because, with this style of presentation, it’s obvious that Mamet is one director who actually respects the intelligence of his audience.  I can only hope that the studio executives who shepherded this project through development don’t mistake Spartan’s $4 million box office take with that of a failure, because such a connection would spell an unfortunately less than golden future for other more literate projects.

Judging from the prevalence of Hollywood releases featuring Special Forces operatives on top-secret missions and political scandals taking place in the White House, the two topics are quite popular with the movie-going public.   Spartan is the best film to have been released in either of the aforementioned genres over the course of the last year.  The ingredients necessary for this lofty praise?  Realism, intelligence and respect.  Who would ever have guessed that such qualities could lift a movie into the upper echelon of the cinematic medium?

chris neumer

yes, it's true: Spartan's title is a reference to the fact that in ancient Greece, when one city-state would request help from Sparta, Sparta would send them a single warrior.