Les espions dans la ville

Catch the first few minutes of this movie when it plays on the late show (probably the only place you'll find it) - the opening bit, a commercial for NO SWEAT deodorant, is one of the most unintentionally funny things you'll ever see. Imagine a cross between Dante's Inferno with disco inferno, with people dressed in costumes that look like they are from an S&M shop.

The rest of the movie? Sadly, it doesn't measure up to that. Though there are a few unintentionally funny moments (such as when Lee Majors' character near the end of the movie discovers the secret - which we've LONG deducted before him!), the rest of the movie is pretty much a slow slog, with many contrived scenes or scenes that really aren't needed there. Saul Rubinek provides the better moments, though he isn't in much of the movie.

"Roll it on or spray (spray)....Roll it on or spray (spray)....Roll it on or spray.....or there'll be the devil to pay!.....No Sweat, No Sweat....NO SWEAT NO SWEAT!"

A person with dubious background purchases an ad agency. There he meticulously replaces the long-standing staff with his own. He buys targeted ad space.

We have already figured out what has happened and what is going to happen so the only thing left is to watch the movie for the particular acting and maybe some twists and details. (Fat chance)

This has all the qualities of the 1960s ... oops, 1980s television program. This movie has everything from cheap sets to stilted statements. The only redeeming feature is looking at the old tiny cars and something called a VCR.

They did think to include Valerie Perrine who is a lot more interesting in Steambath ) TV adaptation of Bruce Jay Friedman's off-Broadway play.

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.

*****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.

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.