Spartan (film)

Spartan
Directed by	David Mamet
Produced by	David Bergstein Moshe Diamant Art Linson Elie Samaha
Written by	David Mamet
Starring	Val Kilmer Derek Luke William H. Macy Kristen Bell Tia Texada Ed O'Neill
Music by	Mark Isham
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	January 31, 2004 (2004-01-31) (Bangkok) March 12, 2004 (2004-03-12)
Running time	106 minutes
Language	English
Budget	$23 million
Box office	$8,112,712

Spartan is a 2004 American political thriller film written and directed by David Mamet. It features Val Kilmer, Derek Luke, Tia Texada, Ed O'Neill, William H. Macy, and Kristen Bell. It was released in The United States and Canada on 12 March 2004.

Plot

Bobby Scott (Val Kilmer) is a former Force Recon Master Gunnery Sergeant, acting as a selection cadre member for Delta Force. While observing a "stress phase" exercise designed to evaluate Delta candidates, Scott meets recruit Curtis (Derek Luke) and Sergeant Jacqueline Black (Tia Texada), an edged-weapons ("knife-fighting") instructor. Sergeant Black and Curtis each demonstrate their competence, and make plain to Scott their ambitions to serve on future missions.

Scott is contacted to assist in a clandestine operation to find and recover the President's daughter, Laura Newton (Kristen Bell), later revealed to be abducted by members of an international sex slavery ring. Scott has two days to find Laura before the media reports her missing from her classes at Harvard. They discover Laura was secretly involved in an escort service and track down her bordello, where the madam gives the location to a pay phone that serves as a contact point for the captors. When the phone is used, Scott and Curtis tail the captors to a beach house. As Scott enters the beach house, he and Curtis are provoked into killing the men in self-defense before they can learn anything more.

Calls placed to the pay phone are traced back to Tariq Asani (Saïd Taghmaoui), a Lebanese federal prisoner. Under orders from Robert Burch (Ed O'Neill), the head of the investigation, a robbery is staged at a gas station to intercept Asani's prisoner transport en route to a different facility for his medical treatment. Scott, pretending to be the robber, fakes killing the transport guard then kills the other inmate but spares Asani in exchange for Asani to use his connections to procure an immediate flight out of the country. As they flee, Asani confirms the sex slavery ring is based in Dubai. Scott stops at a convenience store and goes inside to meet with Curtis to get a weapon and relay the information, but Asani spots an officer wearing a badge and opens fire with a shotgun from a parked truck nearby. Curtis is wounded and Scott has to shoot and kill Asani.

As Scott preps to travel to Dubai, a news broadcast reports that Laura and her college professor were discovered drowned while sailing off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and consequently, the rescue operation is called off. Scott returns home, but Curtis approaches him with proof Laura was indeed at the beach house they visited and persuades Scott she couldn't have been killed in the boating accident. When Scott and Curtis return to the beach house to investigate further, Curtis is killed by a sniper observing the house from a boat nearby. Scott escapes and tries to contact Laura's mother with the evidence, but is prevented by a Secret Service agent. Upon seeing the proof of Laura's abduction, the agent admits the President pulled Laura's Secret Service detail to use as extra protection for himself during a trip he made to have an affair; making Laura vulnerable to the kidnappers. The President's handlers then faked her death to shield him from the political fallout that would result should the media learn of his actions. Scott meets with Sgt. Black and asks her help in rescuing Laura from Dubai.

Deprived of any support, Scott turns to Avi (Moshe Ivgy), a former Israeli operative now working in the private sector, who smuggles weapons for Scott into Dubai concealed in a cargo container. Scott and "Jones" (Kick Gurry), an Australian mercenary, locate the house where Laura is being held and ambush her captors as they bring her to a car to be moved. Jones is killed during the ensuing shootout and Scott flees with Laura to a safe house. The following night, Scott takes Laura to the airport to hide inside the cargo container while it's flown to Geneva. Scott discovers he is being tracked when he finds a transmitter in his knife and rushes Laura out of the container just as Stoddard (William H. Macy) and operatives arrive seeking to apprehend them. Stoddard gives chase through the hangar and shoots Scott, separating him from Laura. Stoddard hands Laura over to one of his operatives and implies she will be killed to maintain the cover story, then continues to search for Scott who has hidden somewhere in the hangar.

The operative turns out to be Sgt. Black, who ignores Stoddard's orders and delivers Laura to a private jet belonging to a Swedish news agency preparing for takeoff nearby. The journalists immediately recognize Laura and allow her aboard, but Sgt. Black is shot dead by Stoddard in the process. Scott then uses his knife to slit Stoddard's throat just as the jet takes off with Laura safely aboard. Afterwards, in London, a news broadcast seen from a shop's window explains that Laura's death was faked as a ploy to assist in her rescue, with the credit being publicly given to Burch. Furthermore, as a result of Laura's kidnapping, the U.S. Government promises to take action to end international sex slave trafficking. Scott watches the broadcast with a smile, and then takes a casual walk alone through the downtown streets of the city.

Cast

• Val Kilmer as "Bobby Scott"
• Derek Luke as Curtis
• Tia Texada as Sergeant Jackie Black
• Kristen Bell as Laura Newton
• Johnny Messner as Grace
• Ed O'Neill as Robert Burch
• William H. Macy as Stoddard
• Clark Gregg as Miller
• Natalia Nogulich as Nadya Tellich
• Moshe Ivgy as Avi
• Kick Gurry as "Jones"

Origin of title

• Spartan's title makes multiple allusions:
  • King Leonidas I, of Sparta, is said to have sent one soldier when a neighboring state requested military aid.
  • As Scott says, "One riot, one Ranger". Previously, Mamet used that dialogue in House of Games; and it has subsequently been used in The Unit. The remark is said to be Texas Rangers lore.
  • The film's minimalist style, from the characters' clipped dialogue; to its music (violin and, later, bagpipes, used sparingly); to Mamet's efficient resolution of a plot line that frequently (and intentionally) threatens to become unwieldy.
  • The recurring use of dialogue reinforcing the basic story line -- "Where is the girl?", "I'm here to get the girl back", "Is she safe?", etc. -- intended to emphasize the minimalist narrative style that the film's title evokes.

Production

The automatic knife used in the film is "The Spartan" by Severtech and was designed for this film. The Dubai locales were filmed in Los Angeles, California. Eric L. Haney, a retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major who operated in Delta Force, was the technical advisor, and briefly appears. After Spartan, he and Mamet created The Unit television series about an Army unit mirroring Delta Force. Alexandra Kerry, daughter of U.S. senator, John Kerry, is a bartender in the film. David Mamet's Rabbi, Mordechai Finley, appears as one of the training cadre.

Reception

Spartan received mixed but generally good reviews and has a score of 65% on Rotten Tomatoes and 60% on Metacritic. Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a four-star rating saying that "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." Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph felt the film was let down by a "botched" finale, "as though Mamet felt obliged to reproduce a standard-issue Tom Clancy climax while knowing that this wasn't the way to go."

External links

• Official website
• Spartan at the Internet Movie Database
• Spartan at Rotten Tomatoes