Spartan (2004)
Written and directed by David Mamet

The increasingly puffy Val Kilmer plays a CIA operative who takes things into his own hands when shady government officials and the media conspire to conceal a missing girl's kidnapping into a white slavery ring. Kilmer's character is the sort of thing Tommy Lee Jones would usually play, but perhaps David Mamet recognized that he'd already hit his quota of hackneyed, predictable clichés.

Val gets a Black rookie partner (Derek Luke), and contends with authorities who know more than they're saying. William H. Macy is introduced in a shot with his face half in shadow; that's how bad this shit is.

Kilmer used to be good, right? I could swear it. Mamet, too … wasn't Glengarry Glen Ross cool? I could swear it. And isn't everything William H. Macy does refreshing and wonderful? I could swear that was the case. Perhaps the story here is such a vacuum of by-the-numbers boredom that it sucked out everyone's coolness factor.

Pretty sad state of affairs when the best thing about your movie is the sudden appearance of Ed O'Neill. Spartan sucks.

Review by Señor Golf