Film: American samurai

David Mamet pumps up the paranoia in his political thriller

By Jeannette Catsoulis

In Spartan, the ninth film from writer-director David Mamet, the paranoia that animates every one of his films has crawled all the way up the food chain to the presidency itself. This time, the galvanizing event is the kidnapping of the president's daughter, Laura (Kristen Bell), and the massively secret mission to retrieve her before the press gets the scent. But, this being Mamet, the plight of the girl is incidental--a mere spark to the flame of macho posturing that is Mamet's stock in trade.

First-time Mamet-eer Val Kilmer plays Bobby Scott, a hardened officer in a clandestine special ops force run by career politicians (Ed O'Neill and William H. Macy) who cleave to the need-to-know theory of information dissemination. Bobby is a hot-wired fighting machine, ruthlessly focused ("There's only the mission") and disinclined to bond with his men. When fresh-faced newbie Curtis (Derek Luke) tries to get personal, Bobby cuts him dead. "If I want camaraderie, I'll join the Masons," he snarls, scars popping in mockery of Curtis' still-unblemished good looks.

As the mission progresses and the body count rises--floating to shore from capsized boats, felled by snipers in back yards and parking lots--the comforting swirl of plot and counter-plot is pure Mamet, familiar to us since his 1987 debut House of Games. Like fellow playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute (The Shape of Things), Mamet has always possessed more love for, and a greater facility with, words than images; his passion is prose, delivered in staccato rhythms in an almost assaultive style.

In Spartan, the inexpressive Kilmer slides into this mold with ease, coughing up hairballs of dialogue as efficiently as Mamet regulars O'Neill and Macy. But unlike Gene Hackman in Heist or Steve Martin in The Spanish Prisoner, Kilmer lacks the personality to counter Mamet's essential heartlessness, and the machinations of the plot finally overwhelm the story's humanity. As Bobby's carapace of programmed behavior begins to dissolve, as he morphs incrementally from killing machine to protector, Kilmer never makes us believe there's a soul beneath the Kevlar.

Nevertheless, Spartan has an engaging cinematic restlessness and a welcome assumption of audience intelligence. While touching on presidential infidelity, white slave trading and even infanticide, the movie is really about suits vs. fatigues, loyalty vs. morality. Filmed largely in inky blacks and icy blues--by Glengarry Glen Ross cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchía--many of the scenes have a smoky otherworldliness that pumps the paranoia and heightens the danger. And though Mamet usually has little use for women (his first wife, Lindsay Crouse, is the only woman who ever delivered his lines with flair), the lovely Tia Texada gives a brief but spiky performance as an aggressively careerist soldier on the hunt for a mentor. Currently using her tough-sexy charm to play the volatile Sergeant Cruz on NBC's "Third Watch," Texada is one of those rare performers who can make belligerence itself look vulnerable.

Though granted just one decent scene, young, relative newcomer Bell is extremely good as the kidnapped daughter who realizes too late that Daddy has other priorities. Unnerved and spewing curses, she convinces her rescuers that saving her could be a dangerously noisy affair; so Bobby (acting on the advice of the film's technical adviser, Delta Force operative Eric Haney) punches her firmly in the gut. I have to believe Bell's previous experience--in 2001's Pootie Tang--can hardly have prepared her for this.