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Such a frustrating disappointment

Excellent but underrated film

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Ken Loach's controversial Cannes entry in 1990, which won him the Jury Prize, HIDDEN AGENDA is a faction political thriller sets in a powder keg Belfast during the Northern Ireland Troubles. An American civil rights lawyer Paul Sullivan (Dourif) is crassly murdered along with a Provisional IRA sympathizer by British security force en route to a covert meeting with his secret source, a mysterious Captain Harris (Roëves). Paul's aggrieved girlfriend and colleague, Ingrid Jessner (McDormand), remains in Belfast to seek out the truth, and soon is assisted by the righteous police detective Peter Kerrigan (Cox), designated by the Great Britain to lead the investigation. Congruent with Loach's rigid, anti-sensational stock-in-trade, HIDDEN AGENDA is, paraphrasing its closing quote from James Miller, a former MI5 agent, "like the layers of an onion, the more you peel them away, the more you feel like crying", a somber police procedural strenuously resorting in verbal sparring to piece together the jigsaw of a conspiracy theory which implicates some insidious maneuvers from UK's Conservative party with regard to Margaret Thatcher's rise to power, then poignantly shades into a hammer blow to those who uphold an idealist view on political subterfuges. At least for once, it is not the usual suspects of IRA who are in the receiving end of the diatribe, but the whole rotten democratic polity of the Great Britain, iniquity operated by the powers that be and they are not ashamed, because they cannot be touched. In Loach's all-fired persistence, the reveal (not so shocking to those who are world-weary or cynical), resounds with a cauldron of self-defeat, angst, exasperation and disillusionment. As a pacy thriller, Loach circumspectly orchestrates a fringe approach to downplay all the suspense usually default in the genre (no bombastic car-chasing, fistfight or firefight). The truth- seeking process is intriguingly hard-hitting and hardly impeded by any red herrings or devious plotting (a secret tape is the McGuffin), the resistance is brazenly from the bureaucratic backscratching among top brass by way of face-to-face hectoring (a bumptious Jim Norton is a standout among the squadron of supporting players as the head of the constabulary Mr. Brodie) and Brian Cox is redoubtable as a stout rock refusing to budge from mounting pressure, which makes his powerlessness and concession all the more telling in the coda. Yet, in a pivotal scene with Harris, one can manifestly sense his contempt for the latter, whom he summarily deems as a traitor seeking refuge from IRA, no one can conduct disinterestedly where hardened bias and congenital patriotism can penetrate through one's head as easy as falling off a log. Kerrigan's astute ambiguity is refracted by Frances McDormand's impassioned performance as Ingrid, who is at once ingenuous and intrepid, and doesn't succumb the disheartening reality check solely because she is an outsider, she has nothing else to lose in the purgatory besides her own life, but the film comes to a halt when Kerrigan retreats back from his mission, Loach doesn't want a feel-good deus ex-machina to sabotage his scrutinizing endeavor (otherwise, in a lesser hand, it would be very possible to deploy a secret-recording from Kerrigan of his confab with two high-rank accomplices to turn the table in the eleventh hour), because he doesn't need his films to please everyone, HIDDEN AGENDA is a provocation, but an intelligent one, Mr. Loach masterfully forces us to face a most inconvenient truth with his highly matter-of-fact modality, and its repercussions are here to stay.

This film takes on a complex political issue: the role of the British in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. There are good performances from many of the actors (including a young Frances McDormand), some rousing action, atmospheric cinematography and plenty of local color. But the script makes too little effort to tackle the gray areas involved in this conflict. It's not balanced in its treatment of some complex issues. This could have been a movie that showed how both sides had valid arguments to make, why both factions felt they needed protection from the other, and how that lead to brutal violence on both sides.Instead, it chooses a melodramatic story line, with a decidedly "kick out the British" bias. Too often, the Brits are depicted as evil oppressors who will stop at nothing to hold onto power. The film barely acknowledges that there were plenty of lifelong Northern Irelanders who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom under Crown rule. McDormand's character, a crusader for civil liberties, seems interested only in documenting the Royal Ulster Constabulary's brutal practices against the IRA. Too little focus is given to the IRA's own murderous ways. Orange Order parades are mocked as barbaric "tribal rituals," while Sinn Fein types who want the British out are given a much more sympathetic treatment, depicted as salt-of-the-earth ordinary folk who simply want freedom and sit crying in smoky pubs while singing songs of rebellion. A more nuanced portrait of both factions was needed, but this film doesn't deliver it. Watch '71 (2014) instead.

***SPOILERS*** Top notch political thriller set in Northern Ireland that goes well beyond the conflict in that troubled British controlled province and into the heart and policy making of the British Government itself. After American human rights activist Paul Sullivan, Brad Dourif, was gunned down together with his Irish contact Molloy, Brian McCann,by the British police outside of Dungannon an official inquiry is brought in on the case with high ranking British law enforcement officers Kerrigan & Maxwell, Brian Cox & John Benfield.Kerrigan getting in touch with Sullivan's friend and colleague in the American human rights group Ingrid Jessner, Frances McDormand,finds out from her that Sullivan together with Molloy were to meet with this mysterious stranger Harris, Maurice Roeves. The meeting with Harris was to be about the authenticity of a tape he had made that was in the possession of Sullivan that seemed to have disappeared from the shooting sight.Jessner get's some information from a secret I.R.A, which it turns out that the late Molloy was a member of,source that the tape contained such explosive information that if made public can unseat the Thatcher regime and bring a number of very high government officials to the bar of justice on charges of treason against the state. Jessner together with Kerrigan gets in touch with the author, Harris, of the incriminating tape at a secret I.R.A meeting hall in Belfast. It turns out that Harris is not only British but a former member of the super-secret UK intelligence agency M15. Harris tells both Jessner and Kerrigan that the deaths of Sullivan and Molloy wasn't, as the official report states, self-defense on the polices part but cold-blooded murder. Harris goes on with what was on the missing tape that Sullivan had on him, that was not in the report. Harris revelations are so shocking that it get's the usual by the book Kerrigan to not only risk his career as a police officer but his life to uncover it. Top members of the British Government had created a shadow/agency answerable only to themselves. This secret agency helped to destroy the previous Edward Heath left to center Conservative Party that controlled Britian during the 1970's and had it replaced, by defeating Heath in the 1975 Conservative party's election, with the ultra-right wing Conservative Margerat Tatcher who's completely under their control. Forming secret death-squads these usurpers behind the throne, or Tatcher Regime, have been pulling off a number of political assassinations all over Britian, as well as in the Irish Republic. Their main purpose was to silence anyone they feel threatened by and if murder doesn't do the trick, like in the case of Officer Kerrigan, personal or political blackmail will.The movie "Secret Agenda" get's a bit unbelievable with Kerrigan agreeing to go all the way in retrieving the important tape, that Harris duplicated, with Jessner. Kerrigan in effect chickens out at the last moment and leaves her out in the cold as he goes to his superiors in the British Police. Kerrigan tells them everything about his and Jessner's, who Kerrigan kept in the dark about all this, upcoming meeting with Harris who's to hand over the secret tape to them the next day at Dublin's O'Connell Bridge!Jessner's meeting with Harris turns into a disaster with him being grabbed by M15 agents who were tipped off, in his being unknowingly double-crossed, by a very naive Kerrigan who should have known better! Beaten and handcuffed Harris is quickly put in a van where he's later shot and killed and his murder made to look like the work of the I.R.A. During all this confusion Jessner gets away from the perusing M15 agents and is later confronted at the Belfast Airport, where she plans to get out of the country, by Kerrigan. Asking Jessner if she has the tape that Harris was to give to her Kerrigan get an unequivocal no answer from her and as both he and his partner Maxwell leave and Jessner goes on her flight back to the US the film goes into freeze-frame and ends. Irgrid Jessner learned a lot from what she herself saw in Northern Ireland and heard from Harris & Co. The most important revelation that Jessner got from all that is never to trust anybody in government, including the very helpful at times Kerrigan. Jessner in fact did have Harris' tape and listening to it in her car on the way to the airport made up her mind that the British people had been hoodwinked long enough. Whats more they deserves to know the truth about what their government is doing in their name and will make sure that they'll find that out by making the contents of Harris' tape public through the free and open American media: that's if they'll have both the guts and foresight to print or broadcast it!

"Hidden Agenda" was an enjoyable political thriller. The story was a somewhat typical Irish against the bloody English set in the late 1980's. The strength of the movie was in the fine acting by Frances McDormand, as usual, Brian Cox and many others. The ending some may find unsatisfactory. It tends to be open ended. I thought it provided much speculation on what Frances McDormand would do. I also thought it to be true to life.