Identità ad alto rischio

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

If you're an avid action fan,you'd have to have been living on planet Mars for about the past month and a half not to have heard newspaper rumours that apparently Dolph Lundgren,our favourite DTV action star,is quitting acting for 20 years.

If this abhorrent rumour is proved to be true (and pray to God it isn't!) ,then HA is a fine movie to depart on.

The plot is basically a spin on Arnold Schwarzenegger's Eraser,with Dolph as Witness Protection Agent Justin Price,who must put a face to a mystery assasin who's bumping off his people.It is truly as hard-to-follow as M:I-2,and way too jumbled for a movie of this sort.

The action scenes,however,are brilliant,working on both the fight scenes,the gunfights and the explosions.This delivers the goods Dolph fans have ordered with their rental fare,and the Swedish man will always be the king of DTV action movies,no matter what the outcome.

Speaking of the fans,don't let his previous film Agent Red put you off from seeing another movie with him in it,let's just say this is a much more,er,PROFESSIONAL effort.***

It's almost become a given that as action stars age, their movies become exponentially worse, and dumber. Dolph has not been immune to this trend as evidenced by some of his most recent outings.

Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised by his latest (and last? if rumors are to be believed) film. HIDDEN AGENDA is by far Dolph's most intelligent, and probably best, movie to date. It is what MISSION IMPOSSIBLE I&II and ERASER aspired to, but failed to deliver.

The script is well-plotted and the writing crisp (I noticed it's the same writer, Les Welden, who wrote Van Damme's best recent-memory film, REPLICANT) with some nice one-liners delivered with tongue and cheek savoir-faire by Dolph. But it is the directing which stands out. Marc Grenier, whose other films I have not yet seen, delivered a terrific looking film on what was clearly a limited budget. He also got a nice performance out of Dolph who is usually constrained to one-sentence grunts and kicks. The action and suspense were plentiful as were the twists and turns.

Overall, a must-see for any Dolph fan, or any movie goer who likes intelligent, suspenseful films. It's a shame films like this one get relegated to direct-to-video status when so many other horrible movies find the big screen just because stars are in them. My $8 would've certainly been better spent on this than half the films I've seen this year.

****1/2 out of 5 stars.

Dolph Lundgren stars as Jason Price a NSA agent who after losing a witness in his protection agency investigates the leak and finds out that there's more then what meets the eye in this mediocre thriller which is definitely a nice looking feature but the plot is just too hard to follow making this for Dolph Lundgren fans who will ignore the plot and just enjoy the action. Still it remains one of Lundgren's better movies in quite awhile.

Hidden Agenda succeeds where lots of other movies fail, because it has a pretty good plot. The action sequences are staged well, and Dolph is not bad at all in his role. He stars as Jason Price, who is an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to protect his friend who is also a witness, and soon gets caught up in a conspiracy where nothing is as it seems. The direction in this movie is competent and well handled. I hope to see more of Marc S. Greinier in the future. For once an intelligent action thriller that doesn't waste our time. Overall, Hidden Agenda is a worthwhile flick. I give it a 4/5

I caught this little baby on TV the other night, sweet jesus I didn't expcet it to be good. There it was late at night, in a slot usually reserved for films whihc have Lorenzo Lamas in them or the director is credited as Alan Smithee or Cecil B. Demented.

As soon as Dolph Lundgrens name popped up I nearly switched off immediately, as my mind suddenly wondered to films he has appeared, such classics as Last Warrior and Agent Red. The TV guide gave it a fairly good write up, saying it was pretty decent, but very confusing. What they found confusing I don't know. That is a problem with a thriller like this, if it hasn't got big names behind it, or is starring some high profile star, then people don't concentrate fully when watching. Look at all those people who found the Matrix really hard to follow, they thought little of the idea of Keanu Reeves doing sci-fi and didn't give the film their undivided attention, and actually listened and watched, the same with this film. If you see the name Dolph Lundgren and thriller in the same sentance in a straight to videoer most reviewers will be browsing through magazines and popping their head up at intermissions to watch the butt kicking.

This isn't exactly original or even exceptionally written in any way, but it follows the rules of good thrillers, the twisting plot, the shady characters, deliberate confusing elements early on to add a sense of mystery. The action was okay but there could have been more, they were pretty short really. I did like Lundgren in this, he is actually playing an interesting person, not just big lump number one.

There are a lot better, and with some actual money put into them, but there a lot more worse thrillers than this, I enjoyed it. $$$/$$$$