Spartan
Tags: comedy, mystery, neo noir, murder, violence, intrigue, suspenseful, storytelling

Plot synopsis:
Robert Scott is a former U.S. Marine Corps Force Recon Master Gunnery Sergeant, acting as a selection cadre member for 1st SFOD-D. While observing an exercise designed to evaluate Delta candidates, Scott meets a recruit, Curtis, as well as Sergeant Jacqueline Black, a knife-fighting instructor.
Scott is drawn into a clandestine operation to find Laura Newton, the President's daughter, who is missing. Their search takes them to a bar where girls are recruited as prostitutes, and Scott's team follows a middleman to a bordello that funnels some of these girls to an international sex slavery ring. The madam gives them a contact number leading to a pay phone.
Calls placed to the pay phone are traced back to Tariq Asani, a Lebanese national currently in federal prison. They plan to intercept Asani during a prisoner transport and gain information from him about the sex trafficking operation.
When the car carrying Asani and another prisoner stops en route to its destination, Scott shows up and appears to kill the transport guard, then kills the other prisoner (who was on death row). He spares Asani when Asani says he can get them on a plane out of the country that night and confirms the sex slavery ring is based in Dubai.
Scott stops at a convenience store to relay the information to the team. Curtis provides him with more ammunition, but Asani, waiting in the car, happens to spot the badge of another agent talking with Curtis and opens fire. Curtis is wounded and Scott has to kill Asani.
As the team prepares an assault in Dubai, a news broadcast reports that Laura and her college professor were discovered drowned while sailing off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The rescue operation is called off. Scott returns home, but Curtis tracks him down and persuades him that Laura is alive and shows Scott an earring that was caught in his mat from the beach house identical to those Laura is wearing in a news photograph.
When they return to the beach house, Curtis is killed by a sniper. Scott evades the sniper and when he finds Laura's unique sign on a window in the beach house indicating she was there, he realizes that she is not dead. He takes his pager and phone apart and finds a tracking device.
He tries to contact Laura's mother but he is intercepted by a female Secret Service agent assigned to guard the First Family. When he shows the agent the earring, the agent explains that for years the President has used visits to his daughter as a cover for extramarital affairs, and that he pulled Laura's Secret Service detail to use as extra protection for himself during the latest trip.
Scott enlists Sergeant Black to help him rescue the girl from Dubai and turns to Avi, a former Israeli operative. Avi agrees to get him into Dubai and smuggle Laura out concealed in a cargo container, obtaining weapons for him and support from a man known as Jones.
Jones is killed during the rescue and Scott flees with Laura to a safe house, where he persuades her that although he is alone, he is acting under orders. Correctly guessing that he is really acting on his own, Laura says that King Leonidas of Sparta would respond to requests for help from neighboring kingdoms by sending one man, and decides to trust him.
When he takes Laura to the airport to seal her in the cargo container, Scott discovers he is being tracked when he finds a transmitter hidden in his knife. He rushes her out of the container just as his old team arrives to apprehend them. Scott is shot and Laura is captured. Her captor reveals herself as Sgt. Black, who shows her the earring and photos from the Secret Service agent, convincing Laura to stop struggling. A Swedish news crew witnesses the struggle as they are about to board their own plane nearby, and recognize Laura. Black is shot, and a hysterical Laura is hustled to safety aboard the journalists' plane. Scott finds the injured Black, who asks if Laura is now safe, which Scott confirms.
Later, on a London city street, a stubbled Scott is shown watching an evening news broadcast regarding Laura's return on a television in a shop window. The government spins the story of Laura's kidnapping as an opportunity for the President to take action to end the trafficking of American girls as sex slaves. A British man watching alongside Scott says, "Time to go home," and walks away. Scott watches him leave and says, "Lucky man." Scott is then seen walking off into Piccadilly Circus.

Review: If you go by the plot, or by the casting (Val Kilmer's done his share of stupid actioners), you might well go into this expecting guns, explosions, and improbably ninja-esquire super-agents who parachute around and kill things with their teeth.But this is Mamet, so what you get instead is a sort of weird emotional flatland for almost two hours of film, with Kilmer doing an excellent (Val KILMER?
Director and frequent screen writer David Mamet ('House of Games,' 'State and Main,' 'Spanish Prisoner,' 'Heist,') has crafted a thriller peppered with his stylized, epigrammatic dialogue that takes on the presidency and world corruption in equal parts of vitriol and savvy.
Later, I would learn that Mamet would go on to write some of the best dialogue in all of film with movies like The Untouchables (just like a Wop, brings a knife to a gunfight), The Heist ( everyone loves money, that's why they call it money) and my favourite Mamet film, Glengarry Glenross ( I make $900,000 a year, that's why...).
But if you like films that treat you like you already know what you need to know, and then proceed to show you things that you don't, then Spartan, like The Bourne Identity, is a film that you should enjoy.Val Kilmer plays perhaps a member of the Secret Service, or perhaps he is just one of those covert operatives that is so good at what he does that he is just an invisible spook who shows up to do a job that others have trouble with.
He is driven and he is serious and like The Terminator, he will not stop, ever, until he has finished the job.In this film, that job is to rescue the president's daughter, who was kidnapped while the Secret Service agent watching over her claims he was sleeping while she disappeared.
This is about as raw as it gets and Mamet can take full credit for writing and directing the film as beautifully as he did and Val Kilmer can be proud of what he brought to the table.This is one of the best films of the young 2004 and while it will be forgotten soon enough, when it comes out on video, it is a film that must be seen.9/10.
Here he plays a Marine Gunny (a Master Gunnery Sergeant here) assigned to special ops (probably after Recon) and was the perfect fit for both this film and Mamet's script, which combined with his talent - was one of his best.
Secret Serviceman extraordinnaire Val Kilmer tries to retrieve a kidnapped politician's daughter in this surprisingly-good thriller.There isn't a lot of violence in this modern day tough rescue story, but when it occurs, look out!
This movie stars Val Kilmer as a government agent who is called in to help with the search of the president's missing daughter.
David Mamet's Spartan had me leaving the theater thinking 'yeah, it was a good movie, some things I didn't understand'.
Kilmer's Scott is a little more distant in tone and style sometimes, thinking of things to say to people that could border on a hack's cliche, yet Mamet isn't unforgivable in all the dialog.
But Val Kilmer saves the day as he does with a lot of movies, and his performance alone is worth seeing this Mamet thriller.
The supporting cast includes such standouts as William Macy (one of his worst roles ever), Derek Luke as Kilmer's novice partner, cameo-like appearance by Ed O'Neill, Kristen Bell as the kidnap victim.
The story here sadly feels like something that could happen in real life and it makes "Spartan" different than most Hollywood thrillers .It doesn't change the fact that weak screenplay , bad dialogues and crappy direction make this one a misfire in Mamet's career .
The latest film from director David Mamet is a spy thriller about a ex-Marine special forces agent (Val Kilmer), forced to take on a rookie (Derek Luke) to find and bring back the missing daughter of a high ranking political official.
Its been awhile since I have seen a movie starring Val Kilmer and Spartan only reminded me how bad of an actor he is.
Rating 3/10, a below average thriller that's only worth watching if your a big, big fan of Val Kilmer or David Mamet.
This movie was unnoticed by the general public because of its being somehow simple (with no special effect) but it's for sure genuine and of high quality; it has surprise twists, tough guys and some great action scenes.
Furthermore what makes this flick special is not only the story but also the original way David Mamet chose to tell it; Val Kilmer acted in a very mature and professional manner and deserves many compliments for that..
And Mamet's boy's own fascination with all the Marines and Secret Service stuff is cringe worthy.Kilmer looks like he doesn't know what he's doing for much of it using this very odd non-emotional acting.
In addition to the FAILING screenplay by D.Mamet the director Val's about to glimmer performance just suspended.The cliché scenario : an abducted politician's daughter and the coercion to plunge her into the adultery business and her complaints of her uncaring father and Val's restless efforts to take her back home in spite of not letting her know how many people have been killed on the track to seize her and take her back to the USA outing her from the clutches of faceless Arabic pimps selling young American girls to rich Arabic people.Besides Val uses the profanity in every single frame and even cursing the kidnapped girl while trying to impede her escape from the container he took .
He's not entirely sure what her name is, and follows this up with comments about how he enjoyed acting rough with her on the film and that he came to think of her as his personal play toy, but had to back off when her boyfriend was on set.I like Kilmer on screen but this is one strange dude.
Save your sanity and stay away from Spartan and Heist.Val Kilmer was OK as a marine sergeant who tried to search president's daughter, but he could not save movie from it's rotten screenplay.
This is just my opinion but this is the worst film I've seen all year by far nothing about it works, there are a million co-incidenses that are an improbable stretch, the acting is below sub-par and the characters are two-dimensional at best.
Istantly recognizable Schtick.In a few years our ability to suspend disbelief would be lambasted with increasingly involved special ops within cons within special ops, and we would be listening in every movie to dialog like this: Character One: "I'm going to get you out of here." Character Two: "You're going to get me out of here?" Character One: "I'm going to get you out of here." Or: Character One: "You want a cigarette now?" Character Two: "Can you produce one?" What a relief to find that David Mamet was behind this whole thing -- writer, producer, director, bricoleur.
From this point the movie gets more intriguing and plays to an ending that is disappointing if you consider all you have seen before that.Never mind the ending, although it is too bad it's the last thing you see of 'Spartan', my guess is you will remind the good part.
I don't know what is more pathetic about this movie--the idiotic clichés (swarthy Arabs stealing our blondes, Rambo-like Secret Service/Marine/Ranger types, the officer giving her life for the mission and asking with her last breath if the mission succeeded, the evil politicians, the shallow American press, the magical tracking device that serves as Deus ex machina), or Macy prostituting himself in a pitiful secondary role (Macy playing second string to Val Kilmer?!).
Spartan is a film that tries to be smarter than it is by impressing us with it's fancy tactics and approaches, used as by Kilmer, a mercenary agent, enlisted by a higher power to locate the daughter (the hot sexy and young Kristen Bell) of a government official, whose been abducted and sold into sex slavery.
This is a competent political thriller written and directed by the talented David Mamet with a strong central performance from Val Kilmer as an American secret agent with a direct and brutal style of operation.
More fun mind games from David Mamet, "Spartan" is by no means one of his best (like "House Of Games" or "The Spanish Prisoner"), but is entertaining all the same.
The president's daughter has been kidnapped (by people who may or may not know who she is), and a secret agent named Scott (Val Kilmer) has been given the task of finding her.
The film's pace is a little slow at times and there's a slight blandness to it, but for the Mamet fan there is good (but not necessarily GREAT) dialogue and lots of nifty setpieces (my favorite of which involves a holdup in a cafe).
Writer/Director David Mamet's latest film, 'Spartan', is fast paced, taunt, suspenseful and intelligent.
Whereas 99% of the movie leaves us to determine motivation or objective, Mamet did resort to a 'Hey, I'm the bad guy and let me tell you something' kind of mentality so spoofed in the Batman television program.This small scene notwithstanding, Spartan was a wonderful ride.
You can nearly always count on good dialogue and detailed plotting in a David Mamet film.Val Kilmer stars as a Delta-Force type soldier who is suddenly summoned by the highest powers of the US Government to find out what happened to young girl who has been kidnapped.
We saw 10 minutes of this film.Val Kilmer spouts more of that Mametesque tripe called dialogue as a super-secret agent type guy that is in a world class of his own.
A sparse thriller with Kilmer (william H macy) and a bunch of people you won't have seen before.It is worth it purely because anything Mamet does is worth a look.The film is a based around the disappearance of the daughter of someone important.
Not surprising really since Spartan is written and directed by David Mamet who worked on the Ronin script.When the President's daughter is kidnapped a strict, no-nonsense Secret-Secret Service agent (Val Kilmer) follows an intriguing trail of clues and dead-ends to find out where she is, who took her and why.
A real taut puzzler that dips its toes in the great overly paranoid political shockers of the Nixon era.It's easy to pinpoint the overtly Hollywood-esque sequences of the film (notably, a dog tired opening sequence of a military training exercise guised as an actual frenzied pursuit and the finale's James Bond worthy jabbering heavy fishing in the dark for his assured prey with a double-fisted chrome peacemaker), but what's completely refreshing about the script and Mamet's stark and confident execution is how is so obviously bored to hell he is by the run of mill expositions that practically every other filmmaker would pander to in making a political thriller.
With such a curious character most actors would only muster a sort of emblematic impression of a real man, but Kilmer, having a great year (playing John Holmes taboot, the absolute 180 from his nameless (Scott, Bobby, Curtis?) Army ranger here), meets the role with subdued ballsyness.
David Mamet who is a master of "rhythmic nature of dialogue" in almost everything he has written and in this film "Spartan" he has almost outdone himself.
I recently rented it on DVD and I watched it twice and would watch it again.It kind of me reminded a another film called "Ronnin" which Mamet was also a part of the script writing team; it was similar where you really don't get to know the characters's existence outside of their jobs.
In the case of "Ronnin" even with a good cast the film kind of became dull and yet in "Spartan" the Kilmer's character "Mr. Scott" had such a unique delivery rhythm--almost poetic- way of speaking that also defined his detached character.
I think Val Kilmer is an intelligent and a versatile actor; and just like Mamet he also went a step further with his acting in "Spartan".
As far as how the story unfolds its almost like a jigsaw puzzle from the very start of the film at times you feel a little lost and confused at what or whom some of these characters are.
Overall I think "Spartan" is a great film; its a kind of overlooked masterpiece by this great auteur "David Mamet" whose work maybe regarded by some to be of acquired taste but its really for people who like to think and enjoy the true art of conversation.
I seriously doubt if Tarrantino could even conceive of a story like "Spartan", unless he read it in a comic book let alone write one page of dialogue that remotely comes close to the lexicon of this film or any of Mamet's work.
I am not a big fan of David Mamet either but I respect good honest work and however small "Spartan" maybe against those senseless blockbusters which preside on their special effects, "Spartan" on the other hand surpasses them for its simple classic film making where once again a writer manages to create characters in a thought provoking engaging story where the only special effects are your character actors who somehow are in the same zone as the writer/director and this collaboration becomes the art of classic film making.
Mamet's back again with his deceptive sleights of hand, rushing poor Val Kilmer from one precarious situation to the next as if trying to outdo "24".But breathless pace, self-indulgently clever (or rather not so clever) dialogue and plenty of mechanical twists and turns can't hide the fact that this flat and unconvincing charade never generates a shred of emotional or intellectual resonance.Watch those great 70s conspiracy thrillers instead.
If you want to see several SEVERAL useless & pointless characters appearing in ONE movie,go and see David Mamet's Spartan.
Unfortunately, this was not a result of a clever script intended to make the audience wonder about what was happening, and then surprise them by letting the pieces fall into place.In this entire movie, there were only two characters I felt any attachment to whatsoever: Val Kilmer's character and the president's daughter.
So the character dies, and Val Kilmer is sad, and the emotional music is playing, you're thinking, "So what?"If you really want to see this movie, go ahead and rent it when it comes out.
This film had dialogue that made you wonder what in the world they were talking about, no one talks like Val Kilmer did, who by the way performed terribly.
David Mamet is a solid writer and director,so I thought that Spartan was going to be a good thriller and I was not wrong.This is a thriller to think,something not usual in a thriller.The plot is not original,but the way in which a lot of things are solved are really originally and this movie has some surprises.Mamet made this great movie after a boring film called Heist.Val Kilmer is a very good actor and here he makes an excellent performance.I recommend this great film because it was really a pleasure to see a thriller like this one that makes you think.In conclusion,a fascinating experience.Rating: 9.
The tale of a Marine called above and beyond the call of duty......only to be betrayed by those appointed over him.Spartan follows Scott (Val Kilmer), a member of an unnamed special operations unit tasked to support the Secret Service when the daughter of the President goes missing.
David Mamet directs Val Kilmer's "Spartan" experience..
It's a good plot altogether, but the movie seems at times contrived due to the Mamet-esque screen writing that typically emphasizes forced and deliberate dialogue over natural language flow.
For those of us who appreciate his work, we love watching his mind games, listening to that clipped cadence, the sparse dialogue that says little, yet reveals much.The premise of "Spartan" might seem like the stuff TV movies are made of - the president's daughter has been kidnapped.
The story unfolds - true, some of the plot points are a bit coincidental - the twists actually work and Mamet keeps us guessing.The emotional coldness of Scott (Val Kilmer) and other characters might be off-putting to audiences used to melodramatic moments in movies of this ilk.
I consider David Mamet as the David Lynch of screenwriters, he's the man behind scripts of movies like Ronin and The Untouchables, now he's back for another movie that he directed himself along with Heist.Spartan stars Val Kilmer, Derek Luke and William H Macy and tells the story of an investigation to retrieve the kidnapped daughter of a political leader or something.
Personnaly I love Val Kilmer, I like the guy because he plays with such ease and this movie is no different.The movie was a complex script that evolves fast, it's a thriller that doesn't really go on scaring us or putting in too much action, it's more of a suspense film.
The characters run through the film, and only towards the end do you begin to understand their own motivations.Val Kilmer is stellar in this movie.
If there is any government organization that mostly has it's act together it is those folks.But in this movie they are loaded with rogue or in-league agents who are so prevalent that Val Kilmer's character Scott can't even come back to the U.S.Really now.
SPARTAN is Mamet's best film to date.
On top of this confusing plot with simple characters, the movie does not spend a second explaining things like most thrillers do, it simply shows what it needs to not wasting any airtime.
Mamet is increasingly becoming one of the most interesting writer/directors in film, and with SPARTAN, he tries his had at the suspense/thriller genre.
If you like intelligent, slow-moving thrillers, than Spartan is just the movie for you.