Agency - Botschaft des Bösen

When people talk about ''crappy Canadian movies" they're referring to movies like Agency. Somebody puts his whole life into writing a script and seeing it through the development process. But the subject matter is something dull - curling, the ad business, Anne of Green Gables. So instead of getting big-time Hollywood funding the movie's producers have to bamboozle Canadian dentists into chipping in as a tax dodge. You end up with a cheaply made movie that wouldn't see the inside of a movie theatre without a terrorist threat, and probably got shown on late-night CBC at least once a year for decades. Lee Majors looked good in that beard, though.

I have seen Agency the first time on TV many years ago. Even the French version (done in Paris...) was not bad, but couldn't save it...

Again Montreal passes for an American city (too oblivious that Place Ville Marie is shown too much here) in winter. And Lee Majors tried here, even with a beard, to get rid of the typecast of the Six Million Dollar Man he portrayed, along with Valerie Perrine who wanted to pump some gas in her failing career and Robert Mitchum, a veteran now condemmed to roles in bad films...

The story's good, moving. But bad photography, poor editing (some scenes are too dark) and some weak performances spoil everything. At least Saul Rubinek steals the show here as the employee who tries to denounce the scheme but gets killed by Quinn's secret henchmen...

Sad to say the least: even the interesting stories get some bad treatment. And you don't need subliminal messages to tell it...

AGENCY is another of those Canadian-made pictures posing as an American film, replete with big-name U.S. actors, and featuring Montreal unconvincingly standing in for Washington, D.C.

With a premise that is more intriguing and timely now than ever - subliminal messages in TV ads - one would have wished for a sincere, thoughtful approach. Instead, the wretched script is awash with bad dialogue and, in the second half, silly corporate intrigue scenes involving Lee Majors slinking about the ad agency at night, trying to get to the bottom of boss Robert Mitchum's nefarious political machinations. Mitchum's henchmen are so laughable-looking and inept that they appear to have been recruited straight from a Pink Panther film. Parts of the film border on outright comedy.

Still, the film is not completely without merit. The first half is promising; Majors makes an affable protagonist; Saul Rubinek is quite good as the harried eccentric who first discovers Mitchum's conspiracy (although his open contempt of his boss makes his continued employment at the agency another implausible factor). Valerie Perrine, however, appears in an entirely disposable role as the obligatory concerned wife.

Finally, all production elements are professional, and AGENCY at least turns out to be a diverting, if daft and disappointing, thriller. I was not bored.

A mysterious millionaire buys an ad agency and begins to replace its employees with his own people, who don't appear to be advertising types at all. A copywriter begins to suspect that the man isn't interested in selling products, as much as he is in inserting his own sinister political beliefs into the commercials the agency runs on television in order to subliminally brainwash an unsuspecting public into supporting the causes and candidates he wants. When the copywriter confides his suspicions to a friend and soon afterwards is mysteriously killed, his friend begins his own investigation.

Could have been a really good movie in more capable hands. As it is, it is rather slow and interest wanes mid way.

Robert Mitchum is barely in it. It's really a lee Majors movie. Valerie Perinne had already lost her looks and is not a particilarly good actress.

In this era of MAD MEN, people are taking a longer look at Madison Avenue advertising agencies and what they did in years gone by. Well, this rare 1980 film starring Robert Mitchum, issued as MIND GAMES, which exists only on video and has not been issued on DVD, should be of interest to anyone making a real study of this subject. Mitchum is as good as ever as the mysterious new boss ('with no background in the advertising business' as people mutter darkly to themselves) of an ad agency which he has just bought at a ridiculously high price. It turns out that Mitchum is up to no good. He eventually admits that he is amply funded by an anonymous group of the financial elite to insert subliminal messages into the ads of commercial sponsors, in order to influence elections. He has just turned round a US Senate race in Arizona by this means, and brought about the defeat of a liberal Senator named Grunsky. I noticed in the credits at the end that Alicia Grunsky was an assistant art director of the film, so this must have been an 'in joke' of the production team. The 'hero' of the story is the creative director of the ad agency, a Jon Hamm figure, who discovers the truth and struggles to stop Mitchum's diabolical plans to manipulate the public and eventually manufacture a president of the sinister elite's choice. Unfortunately, Majors wears one of the most offensively manicured beards imaginable, and is the very image of strutting male vanity, so it is impossible to warm to him. His girl friend is a pathetic, whimpering creature played by Valerie Perrine. Spare us! The only engaging and likable character in the film is an agency employee played by the amusing Saul Rubinek, but he gets killed by Mitchum's goons early in the story, his body stuffed into a refrigerator. The film is based on a novel called AGENCY by Paul Gottlieb, whose other filmed work in 1978 was IN PRAISE OF OLDER WOMEN. The actress Alexandra Stewart appeared in the earlier film and is very effective in AGENCY as well, as Mitchum's sinister and glamorous deputy. Stewart, Canadian by origin, was an alluring ingénue in the sixties in many British films and is still working, having appeared in an astounding 134 titles. She has often specialised in the restrained, aloof, seductive female characters who don't give anything away (except from time to time their virtue). This film is interesting if you are interested. Mitchum glides through it with his usual aplomb, smoothing the wrinkles out of the story by making everything seem convincing, due to his quiet, menacing dominance not only of the agency but of the screen as well.