This is a bad, bad movie, done with a lot of talent. Everyone in the cast seems to be doing an excellent job of what the director wants done - but why? Why? The plot could have made a good short story or been the basis for a much more interesting full-length movie, but not this one. The main problem is the dialogue, which resembles nothing in real life. Speaking their lines, the characters seem to be working very hard at something other than communicating. There is nothing spontaneous, natural, or, in short, believable about *any* line of dialogue. The consistency is amazing - *never* does anyone say something the way a real person in such a situation would say it. As a result the characters become machines for speaking lines, not people. As a mystery, this movie missed its big chance: the payoff should not have involved the cops stepping in and finally identifying all the bad guys, but the inventor stepping in and revealing the mechanism by which he works his remote-control robots.
Review of The Spanish Prisoner
