The Spanish Prisoner is the most pleasurably convoluted cinematic conundrum to pass this way since The Usual Suspects. It’s a trick: its entire raison d’être is to pull the wool over our eyes even while it lays its cards on the table. In that it’s most like Mamet’s dizzying calling card House of Games. It’s a film that makes no secret of obfuscation even while it shows you everything. Its punchline is a killer, hidden in plain sight. Named for a classic con, it tells of Joe Ross (Campbell Scott), creator of a ‘process’ that will make his employers rich. On a business retreat to the sunny Caribbean, he meets wealthy businessman Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin). Also present is an FBI agent. Joe, however, is nervous of his bosses, afraid they are taking his work without proper recompense, and enlists Dell’s help to secure his legal position.

And to say much more would be a shame, because Mamet’s picture is one where less is always more. Arguably, once it finally fades out and you’re faced with only Carter Burwell’s seductive score, you can start and unpick all that you’ve seen, but, like The Usual Suspects, that’s as much to do with your own sense of gullibility as the picture’s deficiencies. There is little doubt that Mamet has locked this down, and nagging questions - about Joe’s glasses, about that duplicate formula book - begin to look less like loose-ends the more you think on.

Typically, Mamet has assembled a sterling cast who can act the hell out of a cracking script. Scott plays innocence (the only real innocent in the picture, maybe) to the hilt. Like Lindsey Crouse (the former Mrs Mamet) in House of Games, this ‘clean-cut, semi-patrician brunette’ resides only just this side of sympathetic. Rebecca Pidgeon (the current Mrs Mamet) is terrific as the doting, plucky secretary who comes to Joe’s aid in a crisis. And the white-haired Martin, in a rare straight role, has never been better. There is strong support from the likes of the all-too-seldom seen Ben Gazzara, and Mamet regular, the master magician Ricky Jay.

Of course, this is very much an entertainment. It has neither the depth of, say, Glengarry Glen Ross, nor the moral weight of Homicide. But nor does it pretend. Mamet is a serious writer (some deliciously elliptic dialogue) who has a weakness for games. Like The Usual Suspects, this witty and dispassionate riddle is essentially Hitchcock for the 90s. Trust everyone, Mamet says, but cut the cards. A delight.