Spartan

While I enjoyed watching how things played out (and the way Mamet sets things up, he never gets there, it's always a new development that scraps the "conceived" course of action, being nimble is a must for this protagonist played by Val Kilmer), his dialogue is wearing a little thin on me because he basically has most of the characters simply repeat fragments of their last phrase/sentence to maintain the trademark Mamet cadence. It's starting to sound forced by me.

But it's still watchable (in the "what's gonna happen next" department), though the vagaries of the plot leave something to be desired because I got the feeling that there were some mechanics of the plot that would fail under careful scrutiny (as in "well, wasn't that convenience..." category).

It was still one of the better movie viewing experience of 2004, so I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.