Val Kilmer gives what should have been a career-revitalizing performance in writer-director David
Mamet’s Spartan, a government-conspiracy drama that casts an oblique eye on modern military
politics. As Robert Scott, a government operative called in when the president’s daughter is kidnapped, Kilmer has just the right deadpan style for Mamet’s trademark dialogue. Deception proves to be Scott’s main interrogation tool, but even that fails him when he begins to believe he’s the one being deceived.
