Agency

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.

*****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.

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.

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...