11. Spartan
Another David Mamet firecracker! I love every minute of it. I think its a smart, adult thriller that refuses to pull any punches or appeal to the lowest common denominator like most studio-produced mainstream thrillers do (i.e. potboilers like The Sentinel and Shooter). Val Kilmer (heading into his much-derided plump phase but owning every minute he is on screen and proving to be a total badass in the process) plays Robert Scott, a US government secret agent hardened by years of brutal service and feared by both his peers and enemies as a result. Pulled from assessing and training the newest recruits to follow him into his specific line of work, Scott is tasked with finding Laura Newton (Kristen Bell), the teenage daughter of the President of the United States, who has disappeared, despite being under close secret service surveillance, and is feared to have been kidnapped. Dragging a novice solider (Derek Luke) from out of his training to assist in his operation, Scott has to work fast to find the girl before the story leaks to the media. But whilst working with a special task force, they stumble upon a sinister plot involving a white slavery ring running out of America and into the Middle East, and Stoddard (William H. Macy a close Mamet friend and regular cast member) a corrupt political operative who will do everything in his power to hinder Scott in his mission. I like the long lay-up the film presents us with as we follow Scott through the actual foot work of the investigation, trailing the missing girls university and favourite clubs for clues or breaking out a prisoner from police custody in a faux sting in order to illicit important information from him. The things that make this film a unique and thrilling experience is that all those exposition-soaked lines of dialogue that are thrown in to normal run of the mill Hollywood thrillers in between action sequences and plot twists, are the very things that Mamet makes time for and allows to breathe, giving the film a sense of realism and originality that the thriller genre has been lacking lately! Its the thinking mans Taken.
10. The 39 Steps
An innocent man on the run. A beautiful icy blonde. A fast-moving cross-country pursuit. A chaotic world where no one is ever what they seem. With a movie tag-line like that you just know that this has got to be Hitchcock, right? This is Hitchs 1935 interpretation of John Buchans famous story and its a very loose interpretation. Anyone whos ever read Buchans original story will see that Hitchcocks classic suspense thriller, the first of his many variations on the wronged man on the run to prove his innocence theme, is not the version you want to pick up for a faithful screen reconstruction. For that, look towards that glossy, colour-version with Robert Powell in the lead. If you want an exceptional, fast and sometimes very funny ride through the low-level paranoid conspiracy movie sub-genre, then this is the movie that set the template for them and one of the best there is. Robert Donat famously portrays Richard Hannay. Whilst holidaying in London he meets a mysterious woman (Lucie Manheim) who tells him of a spy ring she is trying to expose. She doesnt know the identity of the master-spy but does know that he is missing a portion of the little finger on his right hand. She also cryptically mentions something called The 39 Steps. Despite any normal person thinking that this woman is a big-old-bag-of-crazy, Hannay takes her to bed only to wake up the next morning to find her dead. Framed for her murder, he escapes and flees to a town in Scotland which she had circled on a map he found amongst her belongings. Along the way, Hannay comes to realise he is being pursued by, not only the police, but also mysterious members of a secret organisation. In search of the man with the disfigured finger, he meets Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), a fellow innocent who decides to help Hannay after the spys handcuff the two together. Imagine the Jason Bourne movies but in black and white with manners and Hays Code induced diluted violence and very terribly English! Its an undeniable British masterpiece.