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Recent releases:
- Bel Canto
- Eighth Grade
- Pond Life
- Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich
- Greta
- Dragged Across Concrete
- Red Joan
- Monty Python's Life of Brian (reissue)
- Little
- Wild Rose
- Missing Link
- Sisters Brothers, The
- Shazam! (3D in some cinemas)
- Out of Blue
- Eaten by Lions
- Us
- White Crow, The
- Ben is Back
- Fisherman's Friends
- Captain Marvel (IMAX in some cinemas)
Agent, The
Stars: William Beck, Stephen Kennedy, Maureen Lipman
Director: Lesley Manning
Translating plays directly to film rarely works and this is no exception to the rule. Despite the title, it's not a spy film. The agent in question (Beck) is a literary one, and the film centres on an Irish author (Kennedy), whose first book was a modest success.
His second is rejected by the agent, who, we suspect, may not even have read it. Desperate, the author, who has some incriminating photos of the agent with his two illegitimate children, taken fortuitously in the park, resorts to blackmail. The tactics seem to work...
Performances are OK - Lipman has a cameo at the end - but the piece simply isn't cinematic. CinemaScope photography is spectacular, with lush backgrounds, but you have to ask: is this the right film fot it?
David Quinlan
UK 2009. UK Distributor: Pinter and Martin. Colour.
80 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: PG.
Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.
Review date: 15 Sep 2009