Customer Reviews

The Secret Agent

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

'Secret Agent' (1996) stars very strong cast -- Bob Hoskins (also ex-producer), Patricia Arquatte, Christian Bale, Gerard Depardieu, Jim Broadbent, Eddie Izzard, and uncredited Robin Williams. The music score is Philip Glass, and the director is Christopher Hampton, who made 'Carrington' before this one. So the film should be better than average classic novel adaptaions, which it isn't. This Conrad adaptation is sluggish, not knowing what it really wants to show.

One great disadventage is that we have seen the adaptation of this Joseph Conrad novel before -- Hitchcock's 'Sabotage' (1936) starring Sylvia Sydney. (Not to be confused with the same director's film named 'Secret Agent.') This version, not perfect to be sure, knows what it is doing, for the master of suspence turned it into a spy story with a thrilling sequence about a bomb hidden in a bag carried by an innocent boy.

However, the new version, though it is more faithful to the original novel, and proud of its great cast, has no sense of what it really is doing. The film opens quite promisingly, with Bob Hoskins' Verloc, a shopkeeper in 1890s London, who actually is a spy in the pay of Russian embassy. He is summoned by the Russain ambassador (very good Eddie Izzard), who tells Verloc to demolish one symbolic building in Britain with a bomb, the building which represents 'time' (you know where).

So far, interesting. But as if to imitate the original novelist's slow moving narrative, the film unwisely introduces many flashbacks that tell us the outcomes of the botched plans. Yes, Conrad uses (intentionally or not, I do not know) the confused narrative that seems to have lost the sense of coherent chronological order (read 'Nostromo'). Hampton not only employs this flashback method once, but twice (!) to show how Mrs. Verloc (miscast Arquatte) meets her fate. So irritating.

The production designs are excellent, the acting is good all in all -- Jim Broadbent as police inspector and Robin Williams as The Professor around whose body a bomb is strapped are memorable among them -- and Philip Glass provides good socre. However, all is wasted or misused, and even Glass's music starts to sound repetitious. The film uses it when there is no need, and that is really annoying.

I like the atmosphere, and I don't think Joseph Conrad is a difficult material to make a film out of it (see 'Victory' made the year before). But Christopher Hampton as director, though good as screenwriter, seems to have killed the material with heavy-handed direction. And its characters that should be more interesting with a smooth story, too.

Secret Agent was quite a disappointment, considering the makeup of the cast: Gerard Depardieu, Robin Williams, Bob Hoskins, Christian Bale, and Patricia Arquette among others.
The movie brings to the screen the story of an Englishman, living with his young wife and her retarded brother in the city of London. Things, however, are not as they seem in 19th Century London, with spies, double agents, anarchists and revolutionaries having a field day...
In short, the acting is surprisingly average (!), the setting is pretty good, while the dialogues and the plot are below average.
The movie has that Sherlock Holmes feel about it, but without the "magic," meaning that in the end you are left... numb, and wondering: "Was that it?"
As for the rating, it could have been PG-13.
Though the potential for a great movie was definitely there it fails to take off. A shame really...

and I admit I did watch it only for Eddie Izzard's performance as the Russian emmissary, AND I DID find it difficult to stay awake....BUT the performances are wonderful all around. Christian Bale is impressive, Robin Williams is delightful, and Bob Hoskins is charming. This dark drama is engaging, as long as you pour yourself a cup of coffee before settling in to watch it.

I liked this film a great deal. All the acting is exceptional, especially Christian Bale as Stevie and Robin Williams as a 19th century Mad Bomber. It has a wonderful score by Glass.

I love Joseph Conrad's novels, but the films are another thing. They virtually never work, and this is just about the worst ever. It's extremely rare and I don't know if it was ever even released in the UK. I know it never got as far as Scotland, for which we can thank Hadrian's Wall. The truth is, the Romans didn't build it, we did to keep films this bad out!

This was obviously a pet project for Bob Hoskins who produced it, but you'd not know it to look at him. He's terrible in the lead. No character, no soul, nothing. Well, he is funny a couple of times, eating his dinner with his hat on or his death scene, but I don't think it was intentional. But compared to the rest of the cast, Eddie Izzard hopeless as the Russian ambassador, Jim Broadbent doing his Only Fools and Horses bit as Inspector Heat, Chris Bale's baleful idiot brother, he almost looks good. But then with the lead going to Patricia Arquette, who wouldn't? She's been worse, but that still doesn't make her any good in this. Her Winnie Verloc is pitiful in all the wrong ways. Why do they hire her? The only consolations are the scenes with Gerard Depardieu and Robin Williams in the restaurant. They work and sum up some of the spirit of the novel even though the two are pretty dire in their scenes in the rest of the film.

The adaptation is faithful but dead. It tells the story but not the characters or the themes and the direction by scripter Christopher Hampton isn't very good either. Honestly, even if you like Conrad you couldn't care less about this one. Badly disappointing and then some.

I very much enjoyed The Secret Agent. If you look up "The Secret Agent" on Wikipedia, you'll find that this movie closely follows the novel, written in 1907. WARNING, SPOILER ALERT: Set in London in 1886. The core story within this movie is Bob Hoskins as a London shopkeeper in the pay of the Russian embassy. After many years service in which he has done no more than give information to the Russians in exchange for a dependable salary, he is told that from now on, to be paid he must produce specific results. He is asked to set off a bomb to "shake things up". Although he has been a good informant, he is a bumbling terrorist, as he acquires a bomb from a bombmaker (Robin Williams) and taking his wife's simple minded brother along directs him to place the bomb. However, the bomb blows up prematurely taking the life of the boy in the process. What follows is Hoskins character "Verloc" attempting to avoid his wife finding out what has happened to her beloved brother, and his attempt to flee the country as his bumbling has caused a death and not produced the desired results demanded by his employers. Eventually, his wife does find out the truth, and in the process discovers that her husband, whom she thought was a good man, good provider and safe haven for her and her simple minded brother, is actually a cold and calculating scoundrel. Taking revenge, she flees with Verloc's money, and confides in a fellow anarchist of her husbands (Gerard Depardieu), who leads her to believe he will protect her, but instead steals her money and flees. Left with nothing, she commits suicide. In the final scenes, Depardieu's character is drinking and feeling remorseful, when the bomb maker comes in and hears the story. After leaving the bar, the bomb maker (Robin Williams) overcome with grief at the loss of the lives of his friends, detonates his suicide vest (you hear the click of his detonator, and the film then freezes to spare us the aftermath of the explosion) thus ending the movie.

Not for everyone. Powerful and true to the spirit of the book. A lot of it is from Conrad's own life, an alienation in a world of academic ideas set against the harsh world of everyday economics in bleak London. Robin Williams is excellent as the professor, a rebel without a cause except rebellion for its own sake. And Phillip Glass's soundtrack is perfect, a haunting cello. I watched this before reading Michael Mello's THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA VERSUS THEODORE JOHN KACZYNSKI: ETHICS, POWER, AND THE INVENTION OF THE UNABOMBER. Powerful stuff!

The novel itself is a good play. If you have read the novel, you will find this movie a true and great visualization of it. The acting is exceptional, especially Christian Bale, Robin Williams and Bob Hoskins who plays the fat, fake anarchist. Although I think the director and actors have done a great job, there are a lot of thoughts and political backgrounds of the characters very difficult to grasp for those who have not read the novel. You might want to watch the movie the second time to really appreciate it.

Christopher Hampton's "The Secret Agent" has received a great many hostile reviews on this website and elsewhere, and i don't know why. Except for the wobbliness of Patricia Arquette's performance (she's totally unconvincing in the film's first half, but very good in her final scenes with Bob Hoskins), this film strikes me as a lost gem. The atmosphere is alluringly dark and seedy, the music by modern master Philip Glass is a wonder, and the bulk of the cast--Hoskins, Christian Bale, Gerard Depardieu, Jim Broadbent, Eddie Izzard---is superb. Robin Williams, in an unbilled role as the most nihilistic of the terrorists, is absolutely terrifying; this is the best non-comedic performance I've ever seen him give. Unlike some other reviewers, I had no trouble with the frequent flashbacks, and the film's ending--in which Williams features prominently--is every bit as scary as that of "Fail-Safe," and for much the same reason. I have never read Conrad's original novel, but the film seems true to what I know of Conrad's style and moral vision. Personally, I think "The Secret Agent" is on a par with Hitchcock's "Sabotage," taken from the same source material. Only Patricia Arquette's missteps early in the film cause me to knock it down to four stars from five.

This is an amazing film and is so very well written. It is marvelously directed by Bob Hoskins who is also wonderful as one of the leads. It is very sensitive and extremely dark. Robin Williams, unbilled, is truly the centerpiece of the whole story. This is a must see for Bob Hoskin's and Robin William's fans. This piece is very different from what the public usually expects from these talented actors.