The Secret Agent
- Original title
- The Secret Agent
- Year
- 1996
- Running time
- 95 min.
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Director
- Screenwriter
- Christopher Hampton. Novel: Joseph Conrad
- Cast
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- Bob Hoskins
- Patricia Arquette
- Gérard Depardieu
- Christian Bale
- Eddie Izzard
- Robin Williams
- Jim Broadbent
- Peter Vaughan
- See all credits
- Music
- Cinematography
- Producer
- Genre
- Mystery | Spy Film. 19th Century
- Movie Groups
- Joseph Conrad Adaptations
- Synopsis
- London of the late 19th century is a haven for political exiles of all sorts - refugees, partisans, anarchists. Verloc has made his living spying for the Russian goverment, an agent provacateur of sorts, while simultaneously providing information to the London police, specifically Chief Inspector Heat. When the new Russian ambassador demands he prove his worth or lose his salary, Verloc sets off a tragic chain of events that involves his pretty young wife Winnie, her retarded brother Stevie, and a figure called the Professor, whose fascination with explosives and destruction makes him the person to call on when Verloc needs a bomb.
- Awards
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1996: Mar del Plata Film Festival: Official Selection
- Critics' reviews
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"A dense, faithful and absorbing adaptation of the Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel"
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"Writer-director Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's widely-read novel is an honorable failure, a screen version that's actually too faithful to its source."
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"This new version is quite faithful to Conrad's novel, not only in content but also in tone."
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"Fairly strong on period atmospherics, but it mainly adds up to yet another pointless adaptation of a literary standby."
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"The movie is full of macabre surprises. As good as Hoskins is as the little sweat-manufacturer caught in everybody's pliers, far better is Robin Williams in an unbilled appearance as a nihilist dynamiter"
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"The big surprise and highlight is not in the clumsily structured, jerky plot of the monotonous mood but an uncredited Robin Williams, actually chilling as a mad bomber anarchist."
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"An only London-based novel, the fidelity of which to the original text does not yield a terrifically exciting film"
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