AGENT GAME

US, 2022, 90 minutes, Colour.

Dermot Mulroney, Adan Canto, Katie Cassidy, Annie Honzeh, Mel Gibson, Jason Isaacs, Barkhad Abdi

Directed by Grant S.Johnson.

An action thriller, centring on CIA operatives and their methods.

Audiences will have to pay constant attention as to what is going on, when it is happening, past or present, and who are the central characters, what they are doing, why, and they’re not necessarily knowing why. At the end, audiences will realise that the opening sequence is actually the end to sequence, everything else flashback, some five weeks earlier, some three weeks earlier… Attention needed!.

The film opens with Mel Gibson in Washington Street, shooting. Then the flashbacks begin, opening in Antwerp with a raid to abduct someone, then at a Base Site in Eastern Europe with an interrogation team. Some mayhem at the Base Site, shootouts, and then flashbacks to the aftermath of the Antwerp abduction, a mysterious flight, mysterious landing, another huge shootout with enormous explosions. And audiences still wondering who is who and who are the goodies and who are the baddies.

In the meantime, there is Mel Gibson in his office, calling in candidates for interviews, giving them special missions, and his continually making phone calls.

The abduction sequences handled dramatically, the attempt not going initially smoothly, shooting, deaths, the waiting car, and the central character seemingly willing to be taken, then hooded and taken to the plane. The plane sequences are also dramatic, a mysterious pilot who locks the door, the hooded captive, the three agents suspicious of each other, even to drawing guns, but that would being removed and the identity of the man revealed.

The interrogation sequences have their frightening moments, a businessman apprehended and hung up for torture and interrogation, evidence that terrorist organisations have been investing in his business. We are suspicious that this is all a set up – and it is, even to the rest of his wife and photographing her.

The main interrogator is played by Jason Isaacs, with backup from Dermot Mulroney. The interrogated man protests the truth, the female member of the team then tries the sweet talk way of interrogation but then sets up a situation where she shoots him. Confrontation with the rest of the team, a death.

Eventually, the three strands of the narrative do come together building up to a final confrontation, the fact that video was taken of the interrogation room and the deaths, that it could go public, one of the agents into sky slipping the video into Mel Gibson’s overcoat, his watching it, realising that there was exposure, his shooting at the car (which was the opening sequence).

And then the film stops. Will Mel Gibson be exposed? Will he be able to pursue the agents? Well, all that is left to ourselves!