Agents Secrets - In Death's Crosshairs

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Movie
German title Agents Secrets - In Death's Crosshairs
Original title Agents secrets
Country of production France , Italy , Spain
original language French
Publishing year 2004
length 109 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Frédéric Schoendoerffer
script Yann Brion
Jean Cosmos
Olivier Douyère
Frédéric Schoendoerffer
Ludovic Schoendoerffer
production Eric Névé
music Bruno Coulais
camera Jean-Pierre Sauvaire
cut Irene Blecua
occupation

Agents Secrets - In the crosshairs of death (Alternative title: Spy Bound - Agents in the shadow ; Original title: Agents secrets ) is a Franco-Italian-Spanish action thriller from 2004. Directed by Frédéric Schoendoerffer , who was also involved in the script. The main roles are cast with Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci .

action

The film tells of the fate of a group of secret agents who are hired to target a Russian arms dealer and who ultimately get caught in the crosshairs of their own employer.

The DGSE -Agentin Barbara, her friend and boss Brisseau and two other male colleagues conduct a secret operation in Morocco through. Despite being warned by a US diplomat, they destroy a cargo ship belonging to the Russian arms dealer Igor Lipovsky, who is supplying the warring parties in Angola with weapons to the displeasure of the French government. They receive support from their two colleagues Raymond and Loïc, who are responsible for the diving operation and attaching the explosive charge to the ship. The Corsican Tony ensures the necessary local contacts.

A little later everything starts to go wrong. Barbara, who wants to quit her job after completing the job, is arrested at Geneva Airport on charges of drug smuggling. After his arrival in Paris, Brisseau meets with Raymond in a hotel to talk to him about Barbara's arrest, which worries him very much. He finds Raymond shot dead in his hotel room. The French secret service officially announced that Raymond had a fatal accident during a military night exercise.

Brisseau does not leave any peace, especially since, shortly before he entered Raymond's room, he saw a suspicious woman in the hallway. Through an informant, he finds out the name of the woman who lives in Madrid. He goes to Spain and shoots the professional killer Maria Menendez.

Lipovsky has since given in, realizing that the sinking of the ship with its load of weapons should be a warning. He agrees to work with the French secret service. When Brisseau visits Barbara in prison, he learns that she has been brought into this situation by her own people in order to kill a renegade confidante of Lipovsky, who is now cooperating with France, Helena Standler.

Only a little later, Brisseau is kidnapped. However, he succeeds in snatching the gun from one of his two guards and using it to shoot the driver of the car. When the car skids and goes up in flames, he is able to save himself from the burning wreck.

Barbara, who was transferred to the infirmary with an injured hand, where Helena Standler works as a nurse, takes the opportunity to offer the woman a glass of water with a deadly poison. She is released a few hours later. Brisseau is already outside to pick her up. The moving car is followed. All of a sudden Loïc appears, sits down with his car behind Georges Brisseau's and slams on the brakes, which abruptly brakes the following vehicle.

Production notes

It is a joint production by La Chauve Souris and Carcharodon in coproduction with TF1 Films Production, 120 Films, Gimages, Alquimia Cinema, Medusa Film, Gimages 6, Cofimage 13, Sogécinéma 2, Natexis Banques Populaires Images 3 with the participation of Canal + and TPS Star. The film was shot underwater in Casablanca , Geneva , Madrid , Paris , Lausanne and at the Center d'Instruction Naval in Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer ( Var department ). Its production cost was an estimated 14 million euros .

reception

publication

On March 31, 2004, the film was released in Belgium, French-speaking Switzerland and France, where the equivalent of around 5.6 million US dollars was grossed. It was also released in 2004 in Greece, German-speaking Switzerland, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Estonia, Italy, Mexico (Festival de Cine Franco-Mexicano) and Norway (DVD premiere). In 2005 he was seen in Spain, Bahrain, Japan, Hungary (DVD premiere), Romania, Argentina, Poland, Finland (DVD premiere), Sweden (DVD premiere), Mexico (Tour de Cine Francés en México), Brazil (São Paulo International Film Festival) and the Czech Republic (French Film Festival). It was presented in the Netherlands on January 28, 2017 at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. It was also published in Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Serbia and Singapore. The international title is Secret Agents , the Spanish Agentes secretos .

The film did not make it into German cinemas. It was shown under the title Spy Bound on August 14, 2004 at the Fantasy Filmfest in Hamburg. On television he was Bound under the title Spy. Agents presented in the shadows . The DVD in turn operates under the title Agents secrets. In the crosshairs of death .

The film was released on May 4, 2006 by Constantin Film with a German soundtrack on DVD.

criticism

The lexicon of international films wrote that the film was a "dark agent thriller that describes its main characters as executing organs of a dirty business" and that "its taciturn characters are believable".

The film magazine Cinema was of the opinion that the "spy-versus-spy traitor game" took "ages to get going", even though the film "would like to be a 'fast-paced agent thriller'".

The author Dieter Wunderlich was quite fond of the film and wrote: “Despite a few action scenes, it is a quiet, taciturn and unpretentious thriller. Precisely because Frédéric Schoendoerffer depicts agent activity more in everyday detail work than in spectacular actions, 'Spy Bound' or 'Agents secret' seems realistic. "

The Italo Cinema site says that it could not have happened to James Bond “that he was being arrested at customs for drug smuggling”. Instead of the “smart womanizer with a return license” there are “in Agents Secrets emotionless order-execution machines that for heaven's sake should never question an order. And instead of non-stop blasts with cool guys, huge booms and great sayings, you get a chilled and sad-looking insight into the everyday life of a secret agent. "Ultimately, the film is about" people who consider themselves something special and have to recognize that they are have the status of slaughter cattle. And be treated the same way ... "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Filming locations for Agents secrets , accessed February 1, 2008.
  2. ↑ Box office results for Agents secrets , accessed February 1, 2008.
  3. ↑ Release dates for Agents secrets , accessed on 1 February, 2008.
  4. ↑ Agents Secrets - In Death's Crosshairs. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Cinema, accessed on February 1, 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / suche.cinema.de
  6. ↑ Spy Bound / Agents secrets sS dieterwunderlich.de. Retrieved March 12, 2018.
  7. ↑ Agents Secrets - In the crosshairs of death sS italo-cinema.de. Retrieved March 12, 2018.