The Spanish Prisoner

A film about what happens to one company employee. Joe Ross is an engineer at a company. He has developed a method that will make it a great deal of money; everyone calls it the Process and what it is is never explained. Joe waits for his share. His boss keeps putting the payment off and steering around the subject. At a meeting in the Caribbean he meets a man named Jimmy Dell. He is wealthy, easy and helpful; he asks Joe to take a gift to his sister, and the friendship starts there. Back in New York, Dell advises him: get a lawyer to secure your rights, put the document in a safe, trust nobody. From there the film proceeds as the mechanics of a confidence trick. Joe tries to protect himself at every step and every protective move draws him further in. The rule of the narrative is that anyone entering a scene may have another purpose, and the viewer knows as little as Joe. David Mamet wrote and directed; the dialogue is deliberately artificial, nobody speaks like this in life, and it increases the unease. Campbell Scott plays Joe and Steve Martin plays Dell. Rebecca Pidgeon and Ben Gazzara are in the cast. One of the good examples of its kind for anyone who likes confidence-trick films and cold tension. For a viewer expecting realistic dialogue, the film talks like a game of chess from beginning to end.