David Mamet isn’t a director known for shooting action. His film career, like his stage work, is largely predicated on the written word. The films he directed, always based on his own scripts, are often talky dramas that occasionally dip their toes in genre. House of Games (1987), Homicide (1991), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), and Heist (2001) are all understated thrillers with action propelled by the clever, often profane, dialogue that Mamet is known for. But with 2004’s Spartan, Mamet made a slight departure to focus, even if in spurts, on well choreographed violence.
Spartan was, and still is, Mamet’s only action film, which isn’t to say it’s wall-to-wall gunfights and fisticuffs. The obvious, but apt, comparison to Mamet’s work here are the crime films of Michael Mann, most notably 1995’s Heat (which shares the marquee attraction of Val Kilmer) and 2015’s Blackhat, which at times feels influenced by Spartan. Ultimately a labyrinthine political thriller, Mamet’s globe-trotting espionage film is full of shady politicians, clandestine operations, and daylight shoot-outs. In the hands of a different filmmaker, and writer, it could have lent itself to being fodder for the next Mission: Impossible franchise entry, but in Mamet’s hands it transforms into a violent and vitriolic account of political power. Except, that it’s not all that serious.
Taking Spartan at face value, it comes off as a dark piece of work. The film follows a free agent’s (Kilmer) attempts to rescue the daughter of a high-ranking government official, a mission that leads him to uncover a series of increasingly nefarious secrets in the process. But Mamet, to his credit, never wallows in sadism, as other directors did at the time in their own films about international terrorism (Body of Lies and Syriana come to mind in this regard). Spartan was released in the midst of the George W. Bush administration, the same year that Michael Moore came out with Fahrenheit 9/11 and Trey Parker and Matt Stone satirized the “War on Terror” with Team America: World Police. But Mamet’s film is less a critique of American politics and the violence it produces than it is a maximalist genre exercise. Kilmer’s agent is presented as an invincible everyman-turned-rogue-agent capable of breaking every law in the name of justice. While this might just be macho posturing on behalf of Mamet, who arguably made a career from macho posturing, it’s hard to ignore how good both he and Kilmer are at it. To quote Kilmer’s character in the film, “Set your motherfucker to receive” and tune in for the nonsense.
Spartan screens tonight, November 25, at Nitehawk Prospect Park on 35mm as part of the series “Val Forever.” It will be introduced by director/producer Ben David Grabinski.
