Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent

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Stephen C @bob25009 07/14/2025 Failure in 1 hour and 35 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The USA grossed over $70,400.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! See more 07/08/2011 A classically directed piece that does its best to present a very old story with some sort of modern relevance. Even though it seems to fail for the most part, what's left is somewhat interesting. An uncredited performance from Robin Williams is by far the best thing here (plus some excellent score), proving that Williams can handle drama just as well as comedy. See more 12/29/2010 fabulous!!! Must have seen if four times now and like it more every time. Great line-up of actors. I just don't understand why Robin Williams, who played a great role, chose to be labelled as "uncredited cast". See more 10/14/2010 THE SECRET AGENT (1996) See more 04/24/2010 A little too short to get the major parts of a novel in. I haven't read this one, but if it's anything like other Conrad, they cut a hell of a lot out to get it to 90 minutes (and it feels like whole scenes must be missing). A few unnecessary flashbacks. But hardly a bad film. I like the cameo too. See more 04/19/2010 Before Terrorism Was a Fashionable Plot Device Eddie Izzard and Robin Williams met on the set of this film. Williams thought Izzard was a funny guy, and when Robin Williams decides to help benefit your comedic career, that's a good thing. There are definitely worse people to have in your corner. I found out about this movie through a documentary I saw about Izzard a while ago which Rotten Tomatoes doesn't seem to have. (Since the website's changes, since blog entries got separated out, I've stopped reviewing movies they don't have, at least for the most part.) I was intrigued by the idea of a thriller with Robin Williams and Eddie Izzard in it, so I put it on my Netflix. I acquire movie recommendations from odd places, it seems, and sometimes, they even turn out to be worth it. I had a hard time keeping track of the plot, but we'll give it a shot. Winnie (Patricia Arquette) has a retarded younger brother, Stevie (Christian Bale). In order to provide a safe home for him, she marries Verloc (Bob Hoskins). Alas for her, he turns out to be an agent for the Russian (I think) government, which is trying to discredit the anarchist movement. (Eddie Izzard is Vladimir, the ambassador or something, so yeah--Russian, but with a drifty accent.) Vladimir sets up a bombing of the Greenwich Observatory for reasons that didn't entirely make sense to me. Also somehow involved are Ossipon (Gérard Depardieu), a French anarchist, and the Professor (Williams as Jeorge Spilvyn, probably for reasons to do with billing), though I'm not sure how. Things do not go well for much of anybody. For men who are best known for their over-the-top personae, Izzard and Williams both give very low-key performances here. Yes, the biggest problem I had with working out whose embassy Verloc was working for was the fact that Izzard's accent wouldn't stay pegged to any one location. No, I'm not entirely sure what Williams's character was doing in the movie at all. However, it is intriguing to me that the closest thing the movie (and presumably the book, but I haven't read it) comes to a voice of reason is a man who goes around all the time with a bomb strapped to his chest and the detonator in his hand. Ossipon, to whom the Professor speaks, probably thinks he himself is saner, and he may well be. However, he also seems bewildered at what is going on, and the Professor is not. He walks in an air of quiet certainty which he only seems to share with Vladimir, though the two are very different men. The characters might have gotten along as well as the actors, for all their differences. Somehow, I had gotten the impression that Eddie Izzard had to travel to the US, specifically New York, to film this movie. Upon checking the filming locations on IMDB, I discover this to be untrue. It was in fact filmed in London, including the actual Greenwich Observatory, at least from the outside. I guess what he meant when he referred to its being his first American film was that it was his first film distributed to a mass American audience. He'd done a short and some television, and then this, where he met Robin Williams, who thinks he's funny and helped launch his career. So. The look of the film ought to have helped me guess, though. Oh, the London of a hundred-odd years ago does get reproduced on soundstages all the time, but there's something irreproducibly claustrophobic about the real thing. Also that lovely room where Vladimir is stern at Verloc. Lovely yet intimidating! Anarchy strikes me as another one of those political philosophies which fails because it involves utterly failing to understand the inherent selfishness of humans. True anarchy, I believe, always ends in dictatorship. Most people really want someone to tell them what to do, and a lot of those who don't want, well, to tell other people what to do. The person who ends up in power is the person who can hold onto the power. It's tricky business. It may be where on the totem pole they are, but none of the characters here seem to have any kind of concrete plan rather than "disrupt things." Which, okay, but it seems a bit of a four year old's plan. Cause a scene. It may strike fear in the heart of The Establishment for a while, but so what? Blowing up Greenwich doesn't seem to provide any benefit to anyone on either end of the political spectrum. It's just something to hang a plot from, really. See more Read all reviews

Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent

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