Spartan

A Secret Service agent (Val Kilmer) becomes a one-man rescue squad when the daughter of the president is kidnapped by a Middle Eastern white-slavery ring. Writer-director David Mamet’s latest reworking of a Hollywood genre (this time the espionage thriller) has all the earmarks of his others: a plot that is all but incomprehensible, riddled with twists and too clever by half; an air of ostentatious, self-congratulatory cynicism; arch, pretentious dialogue that sounds dramatic as all get-out but has little relation to real human speech; and a deliberate, ponderous pace in which director Mamet takes elaborate care to ensure that not one of writer Mamet’s golden words goes unnoticed. Those who consider Mamet a master will be suitably awed by this latest specimen; others beware.