Search - The Secret Agent on DVD

Samuel K. (Solvanda)
Reviewed on 4/11/2019...

I have to admit, I trudged through Joseph Conrad's novels as a young man, due to their reputation as being classics. In the end, I found this author to be a dreadful bore. The Secret Agent is one I never read though. So, it was with some trepidation that I began viewing the newest effort from the BBC to adapt a book which film critic Roger Ebert called the least filmable novel ever written. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The music and shots are dark and claustrophobic, as well as the people, and the naughty squalid shop where much of it resides. This is grade-A uncomfortable viewing. This is a dark night of the human soul clad in Victorian dress and grime. This is terrorism in an age one would think it was foreign to, which strangely feels quite relevant to today.

It's also the first time I've witnessed a spy for the Russian embassy attempt to utilize a cognitively challenged young lad to plant a bomb and blow the Greenwich Line sky high and thus shake up the Western World. The last episode is a bleak downward spiral for all involved and things don't end well for anybody. Of course, what does one expect of a battle between the empowered and the unempowered? There's also a 1992 Region 2 BBC miniseries which stars David Suchet and Peter Capaldi. As well, there is a 1996 film version starring Bob Hoskins, Christian Bale, and Gerard Depardieu.

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