The Spanish Prisoner
Credits
Director:
David Mamet
Screenwriter:
David Mamet
Campbell Scott: Joseph A. 'Joe' Ross
Steve Martin: Julian 'Jimmy' Dell
Rebecca Pidgeon: Susan Ricci
Ben Gazzara: Mr. Klein
Ricky Jay: George Lang
Story (spoilers)
Mathematician Joseph Ross is the brains behind a mathematical method known only as the Process, capable of making the company he works for millions, but he is dissatisfied with his bosses' vague promises of his reward.
While on a business trip he meets the apparently wealthy Jimmy Dell, who he later meets back in America, and explains to him his dilemma, Jimmy offers to help by introducing him to a lawyer, but Joe then discovers that Jimmy's sister, who is supposed to be ill, does not actually exist.
Realising he is the victim of a con artist he contacts the FBI, using a number given to one of his secretaries, Susan Ricci, by an FBI agent on the business trip. They plan a sting operation, and Joe takes the only copy of the Process with him to the meeting with the FBI. After meeting with the FBI he goes to a meeting with Jimmy. Jimmy does not turn up, and when he checks his copy of the Process it has been swapped for a blank book. He reports this to the police, after realising that the FBI he met were fake, and they reveal how everything Jimmy appeared to do was an elaborate hoax, leaving him framed with stealing the Process.
He goes to his friend and partner, George Lang, only to discover he has been killed, and he has again been framed. He seeks refuge with Susan, who supplies him with a plane ticket to Hawaii, where the business trip was, in order to recover a recording of his first meeting with Jimmy. As he is in the airport he realises that he already has Jimmy's fingerprints on a book Jimmy gave him to give to his sister and leaves the airport, just as the gun Susan had placed in his baggage is found. After meeting up with Susan he prepares to get a ferry back, but examines his air ticket and realises it is for Venezuela, where he had already been conned by Jimmy into signing an application for asylum to. Realising Susan is also one of the con artists, he confronts her, and Jimmy reveals he is also on the ferry, and he will now kill him. Joe is the resued by two FBI agents disguised as Japanese tourists, and Jimmy and Co. are arrested, after it is reavealed that the whole plot was organised by Joe's boss Mr Klein.
My opinion
The con act in the Spanish Prisioner is brilliant, and well executed, but the whole film is let down by the ridiculously weak ending, finishing in five minutes what the whole film built up. Some of the dialogue is weird and unlikely, particularly between Joe and Jimmy at the beginning of the film. A good film, but not a masterpiece.