The Spanish Prisoner

Joe Ross is an engineer whose secret process promises enormous profits for the company he works for. Worried that his employers will take the invention without rewarding him, he grows suspicious of those around him. On a trip to a Caribbean island where he demonstrates the process to investors, he meets a wealthy businessman named Jimmy Dell. The two strike up a friendship, but Joe comes to believe that Dell is not who he claims to be. As his professional world closes in and he is wrongly accused of crimes he did not commit, Joe finds himself caught between people who seem to be helping him and others whose motives are unclear.

David Mamet directed and wrote the film, his fourth feature after House of Games, Homicide and Oleanna. Campbell Scott leads as Joe, with Steve Martin as Jimmy Dell, Rebecca Pidgeon as Susan Ricci, Ben Gazzara as Mr. Klein and Ricky Jay as George Lang among the credited cast of 38. The budget was 10 million dollars, and its worldwide gross matched that figure.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.1 from around 27,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.8 from roughly 325 votes. The larger and more engaged IMDb sample points to a generally favorable view among those who have seen it, while the much smaller TMDB group is slightly cooler.