Hidden Agenda Reviews

Due to possession of a top secret disc, Yankee spy Michael McLean (Rod Wilson) apparently gets blown up in his car. Arriving in Berlin to claim his brother's body, David (Kevin Dillon) has no idea why U.S. Embassy attach( Jonathan (J.T. Walsh) is so unctuous and local inspector Steiner (Christopher Plummer) asks so many pointed questions. More importantly, why do shady characters keep shadowing him? After Michael's secretary is murdered, David encounters the mendacious Monika Engelmann (Andrea Roth), who claims the disc belongs to her. Too beautiful to be trustworthy, she may be fronting for her father, a former high-ranking East German operative turned respectable private citizen. As Michael and Monika stay a step ahead of his pursuers, he learns that his brother was a triple agent, the disc contains the names of former secret police snitches, the U.S. government is among those who covet this information, and no one is interested in playing fair. Half the fun of Interpol hokum like this stems from watching the country bumpkin hero develop enough smarts to start yanking the chains of the assassins and sundry international blackguards who crawl out of the woodwork at every turn. In the good old days, Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart would have hinted at superior intelligence lurking under their folksiness. All Dillon can do is look confused; then again, he's probably just confounded by the screenplay's many lapses in logic. Still, thanks to some fast-paced action shuffles and Christopher Plummer's impersonation of a German Columbo, this film occasionally lifts off the runway of mediocrity.