"Heuristic Analog Rental Meats" - Tom Servo
I think most people would agree that the James Bond/superspy movie genre is almost purely an exercise in swagger and style. "Agent" has style all right...but where James Bond movies style comes from Park Avenue, Monaco and Swinging London, "Agent For HARM"'s style comes from K-Mart and the local trailer park.
Wait, that comparison sounded very snotty and elitist, and is unfair and invidious to patrons and residents of those noble institutions. But what I really mean to say is that if you have a K-Mart/trailer park level budget and talent pool, you shouldn't try to make a Park Avenue/Monaco movie.
"Agent For HARM" is strictly from hunger. The lead actor was probably the best looking guy in his high school graduating class at one point, and he still has a certain dramatic quality and sonorous voice...but he's a complete ham. He's also puffy and paunchy and somewhere past middle age (as Crow mentions, he's obviously wearing a corset in certain scenes). So they brilliantined his hair and slapped a ton of make up on him to disguise his blatant age and obvious dissipation. As a result, "Adam Chance" looks less like a super spy than like an insurance salesman on a golf outing, down to the yellow cardigan he wears in every scene.
Props? Special effects? Exotic scenery? Well, "Adam" rides a Vespa class motor scooter, fires a cap pistol at the bad guys (what is that thing, a .10 caliber derringer?) and his climactic action scene is at a landing strip against a Piper Cub. The 'doomsday device' is a CO2 powered pellet gun. 80% of the movie takes place in one location, a weird ramshackle old house on a beach.
Babes? Well, there's one (just one),and "Adam" smarms and slimes all over her in their every scene together in a way guaranteed to send you scrambling for the Ipecac.
OK, but at least there's a clever plot, right? And the hero is clever and resourceful and makes me wish I were him...right? Please? Sorry...the most inventive thing Adam does for the whole first 2/3rds of the movie is to hook up a television's capacitors to a doorknob to electrocute one of the bad guys. Oh, and he sneaks aboard the bad guys' van and hides in the back while they drive to Bad Guys' HQ. Then he strangles/garrotes a bad guy with a coat hanger. I suppose that's fairly dashing of him, but it just made him look like a sneak and a backstabbing coward.
This is what comes of trying to make a superspy thriller financed by trips to the recycling center with their empty Bud cans and selling blood plasma. They didn't make it to "James Bond". They didn't make it to "Man From Uncle", or even "The Gemini Man". They didn't even make it to "Secret Agent Super Dragon". I hate to say it, but even "Double Double 007" is head and shoulders above this poor relation.
I can't imagine anyone watching "Agent" as anything other than an entry at a "Bad Movie Film Festival". Don't pay money to watch this under any circumstance.
I think most people would agree that the James Bond/superspy movie genre is almost purely an exercise in swagger and style. "Agent" has style all right...but where James Bond movies style comes from Park Avenue, Monaco and Swinging London, "Agent For HARM"'s style comes from K-Mart and the local trailer park.
Wait, that comparison sounded very snotty and elitist, and is unfair and invidious to patrons and residents of those noble institutions. But what I really mean to say is that if you have a K-Mart/trailer park level budget and talent pool, you shouldn't try to make a Park Avenue/Monaco movie.
"Agent For HARM" is strictly from hunger. The lead actor was probably the best looking guy in his high school graduating class at one point, and he still has a certain dramatic quality and sonorous voice...but he's a complete ham. He's also puffy and paunchy and somewhere past middle age (as Crow mentions, he's obviously wearing a corset in certain scenes). So they brilliantined his hair and slapped a ton of make up on him to disguise his blatant age and obvious dissipation. As a result, "Adam Chance" looks less like a super spy than like an insurance salesman on a golf outing, down to the yellow cardigan he wears in every scene.
Props? Special effects? Exotic scenery? Well, "Adam" rides a Vespa class motor scooter, fires a cap pistol at the bad guys (what is that thing, a .10 caliber derringer?) and his climactic action scene is at a landing strip against a Piper Cub. The 'doomsday device' is a CO2 powered pellet gun. 80% of the movie takes place in one location, a weird ramshackle old house on a beach.
Babes? Well, there's one (just one),and "Adam" smarms and slimes all over her in their every scene together in a way guaranteed to send you scrambling for the Ipecac.
OK, but at least there's a clever plot, right? And the hero is clever and resourceful and makes me wish I were him...right? Please? Sorry...the most inventive thing Adam does for the whole first 2/3rds of the movie is to hook up a television's capacitors to a doorknob to electrocute one of the bad guys. Oh, and he sneaks aboard the bad guys' van and hides in the back while they drive to Bad Guys' HQ. Then he strangles/garrotes a bad guy with a coat hanger. I suppose that's fairly dashing of him, but it just made him look like a sneak and a backstabbing coward.
This is what comes of trying to make a superspy thriller financed by trips to the recycling center with their empty Bud cans and selling blood plasma. They didn't make it to "James Bond". They didn't make it to "Man From Uncle", or even "The Gemini Man". They didn't even make it to "Secret Agent Super Dragon". I hate to say it, but even "Double Double 007" is head and shoulders above this poor relation.
I can't imagine anyone watching "Agent" as anything other than an entry at a "Bad Movie Film Festival". Don't pay money to watch this under any circumstance.