MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Agenda’: A Hit on British Cops

The British director Ken Loach is a filmmaker equally at home with the documentary and the drama. His fictional films are often based on ripped-from-the-headlines political skirmishes, and that gives them a verity that sometimes makes them seem more “important” than they really are.

His new movie, “Hidden Agenda,” which won the 1990 Special Jury Prize at Cannes, is a taut, straightforward example of Loach’s craftsmanship. Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the early 1980s, it’s an indictment of the shoot-to-kill ruthlessness of the British police forces. Loach and his screenwriter Jim Allen are smart enough to structure the film as a thriller. The movie has a documentarylike atmosphere but the confrontations are brilliantly staged and the dialogue is heightened for dramatic effect. “Hidden Agenda” (rated R for violence and strong language) is a polemic in the way that some of Costa-Gavras’ films are; it may be studded with political theory, but it really moves .

The film (selected theaters) is loosely based on the case of a top-level British police officer, John Stalker, whose condemnation of the violent tactics of the Royal Ulster Constabulary was hushed up, forcing him to go public. In “Hidden Agenda,” the high-level investigator is Brian Cox’s Peter Kerrigan, who comes to Belfast when an American lawyer (Brad Dourif) is shot dead while running down damaging information against the British for a human rights organization. His fiancee (Frances McDormand), a full-time member of the organization, comes to Kerrigan’s aid. She doesn’t trust him at first but his dogged righteousness convinces her that he’s sincerely interested in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

As the investigation proceeds, not only the British army but the British secret service is implicated in a ‘70s dirty-tricks campaign against the liberal Heath and Wilson governments. The question becomes: Will Kerrigan risk his career, perhaps his life, for his principles?

The film’s chief fascination, for all its political edge, is Kerrigan’s psychological turmoil. Brian Cox gives a remarkably shaded and articulate performance; his Kerrigan may at first seem like a bull-chested super-functionary but his weaknesses creep up on you. Cox gives Kerrigan so many dimensions that we’re kept in suspense about his motivations until his final moment.

Can the film be taken for the “truth”? Loach and Allen don’t attempt to present the British side, except to demonstrate how smarmy they really are. “Hidden Agenda” is frankly partisan--its own agenda is not so hidden--and its melodramatics are, from a political standpoint, more than a little suspect. But from an action thriller point of view, the film carries you along without let up.

‘Hidden Agenda’

Frances McDormand: Ingrid Jessner

Brad Dourif: Paul Sullivan

Brian Cox: Peter Kerrigan

A Hemdale release. Director Ken Loach. Producer Eric Fellner. Executive producers John Daly and Derek Gibson. Screenplay by Jim Allen. Cinematographer Clive Tickner. Editor Jonathan Morris. Costumes Daphne Dare. Music Stewart Copeland. Production design Martin Johnson. Sound Simon Okin. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (violence and strong language.)