Spartan: Critic Reviews

Mamet's gamesmanship was more fun when it was less eager to look important.

David Mamet's political thriller manages the difficult trick of being both logically meticulous and genuinely surprising.

Mamet's sometimes confusing latest effort is a lot of gradual buildup to a payoff that falls short.

Until its final stumble, this intelligence thriller ... is charged with brilliance.

Is Spartan a perfect, or even a great, movie? Probably not. But in its prickly irascibility and deeply unsettling intelligence, it makes for a very, very good one.

When Spartan is good, it's surprisingly gripping and fresh, and when it's bad, it's just another overcooked Hollywood paranoid thriller.

By despairing of the military or intelligence communities rather than heroizing them, Mamet is quietly bucking the system.

Mamet's normally dead-on cynicism is wildly off the mark.

Though it's not up to his best work, it's a worthy addition to Mamet's oeuvre.

With the intelligent, stripped-down Spartan, Mr. Mamet demonstrates that he can take something as staid as the political thriller and make it work on his own terms and vice versa.

Like many political thrillers, there is a pervasive paranoia at work here. Only this psychosis feels old, not interesting.

The real violence, as is always the case with Mamet, lies not in the mayhem but in the thrusting rhythms of the dialogue.

The particular pleasure of Spartan is to watch the characters gradually define themselves and the plot gradually emerge like your face in a steamy mirror.

Like Heist, Spartan includes its share of twists and doublecrosses, but it's so effective in immersing you in its dimly lit, claustrophobic world that you don't sit outside the action pondering how Mamet is trying to con you.

An entertaining foray into a world of spy guys, stakeouts and secret government machinations, Spartan teems with the kind of terse crypto-speak that is the playwright and filmmaker's stock-in-trade.

Mamet creates a narrative so complex that it's scarcely worth the effort to unravel it.

It's smart, quick and engrossing, and even if it's also imperfect, it at least attempts to engage subjects too often ignored.

This cloak-and-dagger thriller is far more gripping than its higher-profile cousins.

Both technically accomplished and moderately entertaining.

Not one character makes sense, there is no shred of craft, and the script sounds like it was written by a 6-year-old who has accidentally swallowed a microchip.

Will intrigue only those interested in the nooks and crannies of Mamet's career.

Starts out promisingly, but quickly sinks under the weight of its own plot twists, ponderous pacing and Val Kilmer's monotonous performance as a ruthless special-ops agent.

Good film. Very good.

Despite its many failings, Spartan is better than most of what passes for thrillers down at the multiplex.

The non-conformist has conformed, giving us a movie little different in impact from those many other Hollywood thrillers out there -- the kind that start out really strong only to wind up weak and wonky.