(1997) A conflicted con flick by writer/director David Mamet with his characters speaking in his usual stagy dialogue begins with a gripping set up only to end in a disappointing denouement.

To the Caribbean island of St Estèphe, company president Klein (Ben Gazarra) has brought his emotionally distant team designer and discoverer of a valuable process, Joe Ross (Campbell Scott), for a relaxing getaway, along with company attorney George Lang (Ricky Jay) and secretary Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon), in expectation of Joe's invention turning a huge windfall over the next several years.

George, who is Joe's friend, has a fondness for pithy quips: "Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due" and "when we dream, we dream of money." In anticipation of receiving a large remuneration for his work, Joe splurges a little on new clothes and pays (with his share of George's casino winnings) for Susan's ticket upgrade on the flight back to New York City.

Astonished by Joe's generosity, Susan says to him: "You never know who anybody is…. Who in this world is what they seem?" Before departing the resort, Joe meets Julian "Jimmy" Dell (Steve Martin), who initially offers him a thousand dollars for his cheap camera, which Joe then gives away gratis. Expressing appreciation for the gift along with an apology for his gauche behavior, Jimmy, who's rich, asks a favor of Joe to deliver a package to his sister Mrs Emma Dasilva in New York.

On the plane, Susan's comments about how people are warned not to accept packages from strangers, makes Joe suspicious of Jimmy's small package, which he then opens in the lavatory. Before delivering the package, he goes to a used bookstore, purchases another copy of Don Budge's Budge on Tennis, then gives the substituted copy rewrapped with its card (a recommendation of Joe as a suitable fellow) to the doorman at the address. The copy from Jimmy he deposits along with the only copy of the process in his office safe, for which only he and Mr Klein have a key.

Over the next few days he gets rebuffed by Jimmy for not having given the gift to Emma in person, but then as Susan is all but offering herself up for a romantic fling, he receives a phone call from Jimmy, once again offering an apology and an evening out with his sister. Unfortunately Emma has come down with the flu (as has George); at the exclusive club where Jimmy's a member, he provides Joe with a gift membership (for which Joe signs a certificate without reading it) as well as a Swiss bank account (with only a token deposit of euros).

Learning a little about Joe's development of a lucrative process for Klein's company, Jimmy (referring to himself as a problem solver with a heart of gold) strongly urges his new friend to get legal advice (recommending his own attorney) about the contract to make sure he's not getting screwed by Klein. However, soon after Joe discovers a hole in Jimmy's story about Emma, whom he's never met. Using the card Susan gave him of an FBI agent she'd met on St Estèphe, he calls special agent Pat McCune (Felicity Huffman), who informs Joe that Dell is a notorious con-artist.

Bringing along the only copy of the process, Joe meets with McCune and other FBI agents in a men's restroom at Central Park half an hour before he's to meet with Dell and his lawyer. McCune explains that he's gotten involved in the oldest confidence game in the world, the Spanish Prisoner. When everything turns to other than what it seemed, Joe on the lam goes to Susan's apartment. "Don't you doubt me for an instant?" he asks her. "No," she replies: "I'm stuck on you."

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