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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 11619
Released: June 15, 2004 |
| Our Price: $2.98 |
| Used Price: $0.14 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
FBI. CIA. Secret Service. Black Ops. Robert Scott (Val Kilmer) is all of these. When he is recruited to find Laura, the daughter of a government official, Scott is paired with novice Curtis (Derek Luke). Scott and Curtis stumble upon a white slavery ring, which may have some connection to Laura's disappearance.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary by Val Kilmer
Scene Access
Theatrical Trailer
Description of Spartan:
Writer-director David Mamet (House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner) applies his gift for con games to the world of politics with Spartan. A super-duper Secret Service agent (Val Kilmer, Wonderland) is assigned to find the kidnapped daughter of the President of the United States; was she kidnapped because of who she is, or as part of white slavery ring? Is she dead or alive? To find out the answers, Kilmer puts on disguises, engages in elaborate ruses, and kills ruthlessly--only to discover that he himself may be the one being fooled. Mamet pushes his macho/cryptic dialogue into laughably bad territory and some plot twists seriously test one's suspension of disbelief, but that's part of the game; like any con artist, Mamet knows how to hook you and reel you in, no matter how absurd things get. Also featuring Derek Luke, William H. Macy, and Ed O'Neill. --Bret Fetzer
Spartan Reviews:
A Sad Waste 
2009-01-06 - Without the name David Mamet leading the credits, "Spartan" can easily be confused with a made-for-cable or straight-to-dvd movie from a first time director. Indifferently staged scenes, half-baked political ideas masquerading as a plot, and poor production values (a scene supposedly on the streets of Dubai is particularly embarrassing), leave "Spartan" light years from the Mamet of "House of Cards," "The Spanish Prisoner" or "Heist." Reviewers have been remarkably kind, but this died at the box office, and rightfully so.
"where's the girl" 
2008-12-16 - It's a David Mamet movie. Enough said.
Well I'll ramble on for a moment here because I do like this movie.
If this flick was supposed to be based on real events -or "real events", or had a message, or was popular with rightwingers, or--God spare us--moronically depicted torture as a vital and reliable way to gather informationa and save countless lives from immanent doom--then it would suck in my book. I have very mixed feelings, you might say, on movies depicting the military and spies and lots of the stuff that goes with that like murdering people. But just like any red blooded male and American the dark and unsurprising truth is I love watching violence with guns and explosions and bad a** alpha-males doing the impossible. (I don't remember explosions in this one though.)
Basically SPARTAN can be viewed as a kind of cinematic version of the TV series "24".
Val Kilmer is excellent in this role as a sort of Delta Force type commando or super-elite agent. It has the guy who was in TV's "Married with Children" playing head of the FBI or something and he is fantastic. You wouldn't believe how real he is as a take charge alpha-male head of a huge and powerful governmental agency. Everybody is good.
As far as the plot goes, basically the president's daughter is missing and it ain't clear where she is because she is missing and of course you don't know who has her or why. And you also don't know what some people that you'd think don't know anything actually do or who is up to what or why. A web of decite and misinformation and so on. Who's playin' and who's getting played? Bottom line, what's special about this stylish David Mamet tale is, of course, the dialog. It can be over-the-top at times as is sometimes the case with his stuff, but it's still great and I like how it's laid on thick. And Val Kilmer is the man.
I highly recommend SPARTAN and all David Mamet movies.
I thought it was first rate 
2008-12-04 - This is tightly written and edited down to the final shot. It is flab-free, and if your belief must be suspended here and there, the entertainment quotient makes it worth it. Val Kilmer kills as the super SS agent, searching for the daughter of, the president? We are never told outright. That's one of the charms here. A great way to spend two hours. Watch this.
Ok 
2008-09-18 - For some reason David Mamet has been wildly overpraised as 1st a playwright, then a filmmaker. This is not to say that he's not good, & better than typical playwrights & filmmakers, just that he's not nearly as good as others think he is. Spartan is a good example of typical Mamet- better than your typical thriller, yet still missing something.
The film stars the up & down Val Kilmer as a man named Scott- 1 of the peripatetic Men In Black sorts who freelance dangerous work for assorted government agencies. The thrust of the film is the mother of all urban legends- that many pretty, white (especially blond) young women, are kidnapped off the streets & sold into white slavery overseas. While, on occasions, there have been cases of this, they occur once per decade. More usually American girls who hook overseas do so by choice because the country they practice in has legalized prostitution. This film, however, ties white slavery in with the current anti-Moslem paranoia. I'm as anti-Moslem as the next American (as well anti-all religions), but the plot of the film is absurd. The daughter, Laura Newton (Kristin Bell), of a powerful political figure (of unknown rank) has been kidnapped. Scott goes through a series of seemingly related, but mostly red herring, adventures that sees 2 of his sometime partners killed, Curtis (Derek Luke), & sexy Jackie Black (Tia Texada). The daughter's disappearance can only be covered up so long before the media will have at it, yet it may be the politician wanted his daughter to be kidnapped. A cover story that she drowned at sea is concocted.... Overall, I'd say take a pass & watch the original The Manchurian Candidate. At least there the good & bad are delineated. In Spartan gray is its rapture, & what forms it no rainbow.
SCINTILLATING POLITICAL LIVEWIRE
2008-07-23 - It's hard to figure the film audiences of today. That this slick political thriller would go pear shaped at the box office seems more than a little unfair, considering that far less accomplished films have cut better figures.
Sure, the setting may seem a little musty with all the big tykes from the FBI, the Secret Service, Special Ops and the CIA making an appearance in a criss-cross of motives (kidnap of the President's daughter). But there are still con-tricks and plot twists aplenty, all punctuated by Mamet's signature dialogue, which is as clipped as the mannerisms of the actors. The plot twists are not the usual cerebral kind that we have come to expect from him. They're more action oriented.
Spartan almost plays in real-time, with us, the audience unraveling the meandering plot along with the characters in the film. It whisks us in a dizzy rush of events. We are not given time to think, we are not supposed to think; this is not a reflective film. There is nothing beneath the surface, nothing new. Stop and think, and all sorts of huge implausibilities immediately become apparent.
But to its credit it chugs along with commendable pace and purpose. If I were to be particularly fastidious, I'd say that in the last half an hour Mamet appears to have given in to pandering his audience with what they want in a spy thriller: excitement and melodrama.
Fortunately, Spartan stays clear of the scatter-shot editing and wall-to-wall pounding musical scores that plague most modern action thrillers. Val Kilmer is more than adequate as the effaced warrior. Baby-face Kristen Bell's guest appearance hangs in one's memory.
It's a well-crafted and satisfying film, undeserving of its low rating, and certainly a very worthy rental at the very least.
