David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner takes its name from the confidence
game in which the mark is asked for money to get a rich relative out of prison
in Spain. Once free, the prisoner will reward the mark 10-fold. But there is no
Spanish prisoner, and the mark never sees his money again. We know that Mamet
likes such scams. We've seen him examine them previously in his films House
of Games and Homicide and in his screenplays for movies like The
Edge. In Mamet's screenplay for Wag the Dog, Robert DeNiro is
trying to work a con on the whole country. The stakes are a lot smaller in his
current work.
Campbell Scott (left) is a dope being played like a fiddle by those around him, including new 'friend' Steve Martin.
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The Spanish Prisoner is the story of Joe Ross (Campbell Scott), a
research and development employee at a nameless company making a nameless
product. Joe's work has just resulted in a significant breakthrough, and the
process he has developed is poised to make the company's management team and
all its stockholders indecently rich. Joe just wonders what his cut will be,
but the company president, Mr. Klein (Ben Gazarra), is awfully evasive about
talking to Joe about an appropriate bonus. Joe wants to be a good employee and
well thought of, but he doesn't want to be taken advantage of. And he knows
darned well that the market value of his process is astronomical. So he listens
when his rich new friend, Jimmy Bell (Steve Martin), suggests that he take some
legal advice about the nature of his obligations to the company and issues
concerning ownership of the process. And therein lies a pack of trouble.
A significant problem with The Spanish Prisoner is that it requires Joe
to be such a dope that we lose patience with him. He meets Jimmy when he's
taking pictures on a Caribbean beach and Jimmy approaches to offer $1,000 for
his cheap plastic camera. Anybody else would be thoroughly spooked, but Joe
gives the camera away and chats Jimmy up when their paths cross a short time
later, subsequently agreeing to take a present for Jimmy's sister back to New
York. Mamet eliminates that moment in contemporary airport protocol where an
airline official asks if Joe has been given any package wrapped by a stranger.
But throughout, as he pinballs ever more certainly into the hands of those who
would abuse him, he always makes the wrong choices. Unlike most movie
characters who suffer from too much, Joe lacks a normal component of paranoia.
Still, though we know Joe is being had, we don't know how, by whom and to what
extent. And thereby Mamet keeps us exquisitely entertained. The script plays
nice tricks on us, infusing us with all the paranoia Joe lacks. We see enemies
everywhere, even where they aren't. There's nothing to the present for Jimmy's
sister, for instance. We're sure Jimmy's duped Joe into smuggling dope or maybe
trade or state secrets, surely something. But no, it's just an old book about a
tennis player. Nothing an all. A red herring. Until we realize that the package
wasn't a red herring after all exactly. It was a device, a sleight of hand, a
magician's trick of getting us to look in the wrong place. But boy, do we keep
watching. And we don't see it coming even when it's right in front of us.
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