After the opening, the film is low key but never builds to even a suspicion of a climax. A policeman arrives from the British mainland to investigate, soon finds himself up against two smug Tory-type politicos in a country house, who more or less tell him to keep to his job of suppressing the underclass and keep out of political matters (good idea that, wonder why the British police of today are not told that regularly?!) and then more or less dismissed from their company. Things happen of an unsettling nature and the policeman eventually gives up the struggle for "truth and justice" and flies home.

Applying the fine dictum of Lord Reith ("inform, educate and entertain"), this film (like the BBC and other media of today) falls flat: no information, no education and little entertainment. However, it deserves a few points simply for being dull and low-key, like the "Troubles" Northern Ireland has brought upon itself from, at least, 1969.

there are not democracy without some agenda
Review date: 2003-09-09 Rating: 8 out of 10

When the cinema, literature or any form of art contains a strong ideological or political component as it’s the case with this movie, it’s difficult to distinguish if the work is truly good, bad, or simply it’s that we sympathize with it or not. The own “Battleship Potemkim” I think doesn’t escape to these prejudices. Leni Riefenstahl is just dead with his films of Nazi apology. “Hidden agenda” is a paradigmatic case: is this an extraordinary movie? I believe yes owing the topic it treats, but not so much as for the form, that shows the good and sober performances usual in British actors. This said, well, the director exhibits a few unjust facts and irregular behaviour by the part of the British government, but he does not show so clearly the other side of the agenda corresponding to the terrorists. A problem that has affected many democratic countries of Europe, since when there is no democracy, the terrorism is much more difficult or impossible, although perhaps yes an open war: this problem couldn’t happen neither in the USRR, nor in Hitler's Germany nor in firsts years of Franco's Spain nor Mussolini's Italy, but yes in all these countries at present included France, which was at the edge of the civil war at the beginning of the 1960’s, facts that are reflected in "Day of the Jackal", though in a very different way. Spanish cinema had many years ago also some poor movies intended for domestic consumers showing the fight of the Guardia Civil against the “Maquis” or Republicans hardened in the fight of Civil war and anti Nazi resistance after WW II. These films in black & white were truly coarse propaganda. Today we are more sophisticated, but the fight against ETA Basque terrorism has shown some real crude episodes.

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