Taglines: Can you really trust anyone?
The Spanish Prisoner movie storyline. Joe Ross is a rising star. He’s designed a process that will make his company millions. He wants a bonus for this work, but fears his boss will stiff him. He meets a wealthy stranger, Jimmy Dell, and they strike up an off-kilter friendship. When the boss seems to set Ross up to get nothing, he seeks Dell’s help.
Then he learns Dell is not what he seems, so he contacts an FBI agent through his tightly-wound assistant, Susan Ricci. The FBI asks him to help entrap Dell. He accepts, a sting is arranged, but suddenly it’s he who’s been conned out of the process and framed for murder. Bewildered and desperate, he enlists Susan’s aid to prove his innocence.
The Spanish Prisoner is a 1997 American neo-noir suspense film, written and directed by David Mamet and starring Campbell Scott, Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ben Gazzara, Felicity Huffman and Ricky Jay. The plot entails a story of corporate espionage conducted through an elaborate confidence game. In spite of the film’s title, the actual plot includes only superficial similarities to the Spanish Prisoner scam.
In 1999 the film was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay but lost out to Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight.
About the Story
Corporate engineer Joe Ross (Campbell Scott) has invented a very lucrative, very secret industrial process. While on a corporate retreat at the resort island of St. Estèphe, he meets a wealthy stranger, Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), and attracts the interest of one of the company’s new secretaries, Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon).
Jimmy wants to introduce Joe socially to his sister, an Olympic-class tennis player, in New York and asks him to deliver a package to her. Susan, who sits near Joe on the airplane back to New York, converses with him about how “you never know who anybody is,” talks about unwitting drug mules, and repeats, “Who in this world is what they seem to be? Who?”
Realizing that he doesn’t really know Jimmy, and afraid the package might contain something illegal, Joe opens it on the plane, finding only a book on tennis (the 1939 edition of “Budge on Tennis”); in the process he accidentally rips the cover. Once home, Joe buys another copy of the book, to give to Jimmy’s sister, and keeps the torn one at his office.
Jimmy suggests that Joe’s company and his boss, Mr. Klein (Ben Gazzara), might not give Joe fair compensation for his work. The flirtatious Susan also keeps making suggestions that one never knows whom to trust. Jimmy invites Joe to dinner with Jimmy’s sister, and they meet at Dell’s place.
While at his computer and chatting about business, Jimmy asks if Joe has a Swiss bank account, and finding the answer is no, opens one for him with a token balance (15 Swiss Francs), pretending that it is all an easy lark. Taking him to dinner at a club requiring membership, Jimmy has Joe sign a certificate to join. Over dinner, he advises Joe to consult legal counsel about his position in the company regarding the Process; and Jimmy offers his own lawyer, telling Joe to bring the only copy of the Process to their meeting.
The Spanish Prisoner (1998)
Directed by: David Mamet
Starring: Ben Gazzara, Felicity Huffman, Ricky Jay, Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon, Campbell Scott, Richard L. Friedman, Hilary Hinckle, Christopher Kaldor
Screenplay by: David Mamet
Production Design by: Tim Galvin
Cinematography by: Gabriel Beristain
Film Editing by: Barbara Tulliver
Costume Design by: Susan Lyall
Set Decoration by: Jessica Lanier
Art Direction by: Kathleen Rosen
Music by: Carter Burwell
MPAA Rating: PG for thematic elements including tension, some violent images and brief language.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: April 3, 1998
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