Agency - Botschaft des Bösen

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.

Lee Majors and Saul Rubinek work for the same advertising agency, headed by Robert Mitchum, but all is not as it appears at the office. Saul has a conspiracy theory of subliminal messaging and political tampering through the ads. Lee starts to believe him, and during one scene he shows his sweetie pie Valerie Perrine how they doctor up the print advertisement of an alcohol label to include skull images in the ice cubes. That's the best scene in the movie, because everything else is either boring or typical.

Lots of 1970s movies are pretty bad, and films made in 1980 sometimes bleed into the terrible previous decade. The Agency has that '70s aura to it, like it's a watered down Network, made by a lousy television channel. I'm not trying to be mean, but after seeing thousands and thousands of movies, there's no sense recommending others watch the bad ones.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. the opening scene features an advertisement that takes place in a nightclub with strobe lights and odd camera angles, and it might make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

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.

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...

*****Major Spoilers**** Don't Read If You Did Not See Movie.... Timely movie,especially now when political campaigning never seems to end even after the elections, about the takeover of a large advertising agency, Porter & Stripe, and it's being used to further the agenda of a shadowy and unelected group of power brokers to shape America and the world into what they feel that it should be.

Unknown to the advertising world but with an unlimited amount on money Ted Quinn, Robert Mitchum, buys out the giant Porter & Stripe advertising agency. Quinn soon begins producing and peddling commercials on everything from deodorants drain cleaners and soap products to powered chocolate milk for children. It turns out that the real reason for Quinn's takeover of the agency is not to sell household goods but to sell politicians and even more sinister political ideas to an unsuspecting public.

Quinn slowly starts getting rid of the people working at the agency and begins replacing them with undercover political operatives. One of the people working for the agency as a commercial writer Sam Goldstein, Saul Rubinek, gets wind of what Quinn's plans really are which leads to his death. Sam's friend Philip Morgan, Lee Majors, who at first seemed to be ignorant of what was happening and thinking that Sam was a bid paranoid in his behavior changed his opinion after Sam's death when he comes across a audio tape that Sam recorded just minutes before he died. Marked to be eliminated because he knows too much Morgan is on the run from Quinn's goons throughout the rest of the movie.

Even though dated "Agency" still packs a punch about media manipulation via outside sources and is as good as the many movies made about the same subject since then, 1980. "Agency" is not a top flight Hollywood production with very bad lighting and occasional muffles and drops in the soundtrack but the film still grabs your attention and keeps you interested until the final scene.

Robert Mitchum gives his usual good and workman like performance as Ted Quinn like he did in the many films that he made in the last years of his acting career. Mitchum also gives the movie class and respectability just by being in it.

Lee Majors is surprisingly good with a much more in-depth acting role then what you usually saw him in on TV and in films back then.

Vallerie Perrine is more then adequate as Lee Majors' love interest in the film as well as the damsel in distress. Yet by far the biggest surprise in the movie was Saul Rubinek as Sam Goldstein. Sam who when you first saw him you would think that he's only in the film for comic relief instead became the most pivotal character in the movie.

What I liked most about Rubinek's performance is that the more he got closer to the truth the more his paranoia subsided. As Sam seemed to resigned himself to the fate that was in store for him. Which made Sam both believable and tragic at the same time and which is just the opposite of what you would expect from a part like his in a movie filled with surprises and paranoia like "Agency" to be like.