Secret Agent

Not more than a couple weeks ago, I watched Young & Innocent, another Hitchcock movie from the mid-30’s. In my review of it, I noted how it played like a checklist of the Hitchcock “innocent man on the run” genre. Secret Agent does that for another of his favorite kinds of movie, the espionage thriller. Three agents are tasked with the murder of an enemy operative during World War I. Two of the agents find themselves troubled by their conscience as the plan goes awry, and worse yet, falling in love. It’s a simple set-up, and if remade today, there would be a lot of interesting themes to explore; duty to country versus personal morality, and how war tends to obscure the concept of humanity in favor of “the enemy”. Secret Agent casually mentions them as it passes by like scenery on a highway. It has a checklist of Hitchcock espionage tropes to check off, and dammit, nothing will stand in its way. The result of this is that Secret Agent doesn’t feel fully developed. It hits the necessary beats but ONLY the necessary beats and nothing more. The tension and intrigue one would find in movies like North By Northwest or The 39 Steps just isn’t here. Secret Agent is the sum of its parts and nothing more, and that makes it hard to give much more than a minimal passing grade.