The Spanish Prisoner
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: April 3, 1998 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
This is his sleekest and most engaging film thus far. If you like a good cat-and-mouse game with a keen ear for language, then go. Read full review
90
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
A thriller so tricky that figuring it out is half the fun. Read full review
90
L.A. WeeklyF. X. Feeney
Everyone plays their role (and the roles within their roles) to perfection, and writer-director Mamet keeps us guessing what's what and who's who right up until the final minute. Read full review
90
VarietyLeonard Klady
The picture is a devilishly clever series of reversals that keeps you guessing to the very end. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeJay Carr
It's a treat to encounter the deadpan light-handedness with which Mamet goes about his business. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The Spanish Prisoner resembles Alfred Hitchcock in the way that everything takes place in full view, on sunny beaches and in brightly lit rooms, with attractive people smilingly pulling the rug out from under the hero and revealing the abyss. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyTy Burr
For once, too, David Mamet the director outshines David Mamet the writer. Read full review
80
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
Pure David Mamet is an acquired, but delicious, taste. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Mamet's stylized dialogue, elaborate plot puzzles and the angry cleverness of his characterization makes for an invigorating, if not exactly likeable, mix. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The Spanish Prisoner is for anyone who likes to think and feel along with the characters. Read full review
75
San Francisco ExaminerG. Allen Johnson
The weird thing about the films David Mamet has directed is that they have about as much emotion as a cyborg in a science fiction movie, yet by the end of the picture it isn't necessary; by then the audience has supplied their own. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
The Spanish Prisoner is the smoothest and most convincing of Mamet's elaborate charades and features intriguing performances by Steve Martin and Campbell Scott. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
This is fun if you're looking mainly for light entertainment. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Denby
Mamet has to learn to trust the camera more than he does; he has to stop trying to control everything with language; he has to let loose a little and just give in to the fluency, the ease, the free-flowing pleasure of making a movie. Read full review
60
Dallas ObserverMichael Sragow
Writer-director David Mamet delights in his own supposed cleverness; he wants you to scratch your head while he manipulates your brain. Read full review
60
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The movie's surface of bright, brittle patter, initially off-putting, comes finally to serve as camouflage for the sinister movement of large and powerful forces. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
This is the fifth movie to be written and directed by David Mamet, and it's his most bizarre one yet; people speak in that dreamy, lockjawed manner we first heard in "House of Games," and their entire lives appear to be lived under the spell of some nameless paranoia. Read full review
50
SalonCharles Taylor
The picture is moderately diverting. But it's never much fun. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
The story of an elaborate con game and the wholesale betrayal of an innocent man, it's also an unusually cold film that ends with a feeling of hollow soullessness. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The Spanish Prisoner seems an almost purely theoretical exercise, with Mamet as the con man whose sole goal is to make us believe anything he wants. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
The story works, in that everything fits together, but the film feels hollow and unfinished, like a run-through for a movie rather than the movie itself. Read full review
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