There is a terrible beauty in
watching someone else's life fall apart, and much of the joy here is this
kind of schadenfreude. The inventor of an unspecifed "process" is
ruthlessly conned out of it by Martin, and then framed for theft and
murder to boot. Though the scam is not formally revealed until it has
happened, there is such a sense of creeping paranoia, the viewer is left
with no doubts something terrible is going on -- and this suspicion is well
founded. Indeed, so elegantly drawn is the deception, that the rest of the
film comes as a bit of an anti-climax, the final pay-off not quite living
up to a sublime set-up, and Mamet's script succumbs to a deus ex
machina ending that counters the surgical precision of the previous 90
minutes. Unlike other entries in the "ordinary guy gets involved in murky
business" genre (see below), this one has a plausibility which is
especially disturbing, thanks largely to the fine performance of Scott as victimised hero Joe Ross. There, but for the grace of God, we all go.
B+
