The Secret Agent

One of the most excruciatingly awful movies I have ever seen. It is saved by the unbelievable overacting of David Suchet, and the same from the actress who plays his wife. Most of the characters are one-dimensional caricatures, a fact that adds to the exaggerated plot and, again, the scenery-clawing performances. Suchet deserves an Oscar for excessive excess.

1992 BBC TV adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent in 3 episodes has been unavailable in US, despite its excellence. Late Victorian London is full of anarchists of many stripes, (the forerunners of Bolsheviks, etc.) Suchet plays an agent provocateur, in the pay of a mysterious foreign embassy. His job is to keep tabs on all the other anarchists, and to provoke the odd incident to terrorize the populace, whenever his employer demands. However the police know all about him and the other anarchists. Also Suchet has settled down to a marriage of convenience with Cheryl Campbell, becoming a sleazy shopkeeper and promising to look after his wife's mildly retarded brother. When the embassy demands an incident, Suchet knows he must act, despite the risk of discovery, and of upsetting his household. Both of these consummate actors are at their peak in this gem, with its eerie echos of 9/11, a hundred years later.