The Secret Agent Review

Conrad's novel runs on irony and Christopher Hampton's adaptation treats it as tragedy, which drains the pressure out of an already slow story. Bob Hoskins is the reason to stay. His Verloc is a fat, tired shopkeeper who drifted into treason out of laziness, and Hoskins plays the self pity without once asking you to forgive it. Christian Bale makes Stevie considerably more than a plot device, watchful and easily frightened, forever drawing his circles, and the walk to Greenwich with the tin under his arm is hard to sit through.

Patricia Arquette is stranded. Her accent wanders and the screenplay gives Winnie almost nothing until the knife, so one murder has to carry a marriage the film never bothered to show us. Denis Lenoir finds a good grimy brown for London, but Hampton stages too much of it in static two shots that turn Conrad's sentences into furniture.

Robin Williams turns up uncredited as the Professor, hand on the detonator in his pocket, playing it admirably small to very little effect, because the scene sits outside the plot and stops it dead. Jim Broadbent's Chief Inspector Heat is the only person here who seems to be enjoying himself.