Spar·tan ( P ) Pronunciation Key (spärtn)
adj.
Of or relating to Sparta or its people.
Also spartan
a. Rigorously self-disciplined or self-restrained.
b. Simple, frugal, or austere: a Spartan diet; a spartan lifestyle.
c. Marked by brevity of speech; laconic.
c. Courageous in the face of pain, danger, or adversity.
n.
A citizen of Sparta.
One of Spartan character.
David Mamet is more of playwright/screenwriter rather than a director.
He has won the Pulitzer in drama for ’Glengarry Glen Ross’ (later made into a film) and has written screenplays for ’The Untouchables’, ’Hoffa’, ’The Edge’, ’Ronin’ and ’Hannibal’
As writer and director of ’Spartan’, we get a chance to see him in both his avtars.
This movie is potentially an equivalent of movie versions of ’The Bourne Identity’ and similar movies and one would expect after the first 30 minutes the landscape would explode into one action sequence after the other.
But, Spartan is like no other thriller movie one has ever seen.
Val Kilmer plays a special op officer called Scott who is called in the middle of a training exercise after the president’s daughter is kidnapped.
How and why she was kidnapped is one of the key plot points.
They figure out that the daughter was kidnapped by a slavery ring which supplies blonde women to buyers in the Middle East, without knowledge of who they kidnapped.
Scott is the man to get her but then she suddenly turns up dead with one of her professor’s on his sail boat.
But things are not what they seem.
One of Scott’s trainees Curtis (Derek Luke) proves to him that the girl is alive and Scott has to decide if he should follow only orders or decide to ’bring her home’
I say again, Spartan is like no other thriller movie one has ever seen.
It is the very definition of the word Spartan used as an adjective.
And it will leave one bewildered at the end.
And although I believe that this is a fine piece of movie making,
I am not going to recommend to anyone.
David Mamet should stick to writing, I believe.
His talent here is a waste.