That was an excellent one.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This chilly Canadian thriller appears to have been influenced by the plot of ENEMY OF THE STATE (and ERASER!) and the atmosphere of THE X-FILES in its hi-tech tale of a murky witness protection scheme, secret assassinations, and characters who are never what they seem. It's one of those films with far too many characters, many of whom get mixed up in the brew and don't have much of a part to play anyway. Characters are never introduced and motivations are never made clear. In addition the plot is so darned complex that you'll spend the running time stressfully trying to keep up with the action and working out who is trying to get who. This saps enjoyment from the movie. The final nail in the coffin is the action, MTV-stylised stuff which is deeply disappointing considering the film's star.Dolph Lundgren, action hero of the '80s, found himself in a decline during the 1990s like all the big names from the golden decade of screen action. The dawn of the new millennium found him slogging away in straight-to-video fare alongside former cinematic chums like Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Although Lundgren isn't the world's greatest actor, he always puts in a solid if unexceptional performance and his turn in HIDDEN AGENDA is no different, neither a disgrace nor an Oscar-winner. In fact if anything it may be one of his stronger roles. A shame, then, that his famed martial skills are hardly put to the test as he only gets to show off a couple of kicks and engage in some poorly-staged gun battles.This is one of those films where the director tries to disguise the lack of budget by shooting the action scenes in the dark, where you can't quite see the cheap bullet squibs. It's obvious with the flashy camera-work that he aspires to be the next John Woo or David Fincher, but Marc S. Grenier has little of the skill these directors possess. Similarly, he fails to make the plot line very intriguing, leaving the viewer feeling a little bored and out of touch with the uninspiring leads as the film progresses. No sympathetic characters are built up and instead we get far too many inserts of traffic travelling through a city (with the film sped up). The effect is cool the first few times but quickly wears off, sadly it happens twenty more times through the movie. Generally disappointing, this has little to recommend it beyond Lundgren, the opening chase (the only excitement in the whole film), and a guy who keeps a key glued to the inside of his toupee (!).

I admit up front I'm not a fan of this genre. I have never seen a Jean Claude van Damme film, only saw a couple of the Rocky movies, I've seen one Schwarzenegger and one Stephen Segal. Though I knew who Dolph Lundgren was, I'd never seen him or one of his movies.Tuning into what I thought was a different film called "Hidden Agenda," I got a look at all 6'5 of Dolph Lundgren, the high cheekbones etc., and thought I'd give this "Hidden Agenda" a try.This film is apparently different from other Lundgren films according to other reviews, but I can't judge it on that basis.In the story, Lundgren plays Jason Price, a former government agent. His job is to help people disappear. However, it appears that a hit man called The Cleaner has somehow infiltrated Price's group and is knocking off people the FBI wanted to protect. It's up to Price to find out who it is.This is one of those films where you can't tell the bad people from the good, so everyone is suspect. There were lots of things blowing up, car chases, and fights, but I found it entertaining and involving.I wasn't familiar with the other actors in the film except for Francis X. McCarthy, but they were all good. The only strange thing was the film had a "dubbed" sound to it, even though it wasn't dubbed. Perhaps they had to re-record the sound in a studio - don't know.Anyway, not bad for my first Lundgren foray. He's quite good at what he does.

Ex-agent(?) Price(Dolph in an atypical role, if he does still sport a gun... and automatic pistol) designed the Daedelus program to hide those who must not be found. He's asked by a criminal(?) named Elkert to help him out with it, and then his friend and colleague(?), Sonny goes under, as well. But something goes wrong, and the team behind it, including our lead, have to determine what's going on, before The Cleaner, the perfect(and anonymous) assassin, finds his next victim. This is a picture of two halves, the first one a thriller(with insipid suspense music), second one an action flick(with an overly techno-sounding score). It holds your attention better in the latter, with numerous reveals to the onslaught of plot twists(at least most of them do surprise us), though by the end, several things feel unresolved(it doesn't help that it has no specific "villain", or a central goal for our heroes), and it consistently feels too vague, to the point where you can't trust anyone. The one-liners are few and bad. Storytelling is severely lacking, with this being immensely confusing. You probably have to watch it several times just to figure out what's even going on, and before attempting to sit through this more than once, well, you'd have to come up with a reason for doing so. The filming is decent, although coverage on the fight scenes(as well as lighting, sometimes) is below average. This uses slow-motion, and sometimes, still frames(...yeah, wrap your head around that one) in those bits sometimes, and it doesn't do so to good effect. There is some violence, strong language and brief sexuality and topless female nudity in this. I recommend this to fans of mindless entertainment. 5/10

I caught this little baby on TV the other night, sweet jesus I didn't expcet it to be good. There it was late at night, in a slot usually reserved for films whihc have Lorenzo Lamas in them or the director is credited as Alan Smithee or Cecil B. Demented.As soon as Dolph Lundgrens name popped up I nearly switched off immediately, as my mind suddenly wondered to films he has appeared, such classics as Last Warrior and Agent Red. The TV guide gave it a fairly good write up, saying it was pretty decent, but very confusing. What they found confusing I don't know. That is a problem with a thriller like this, if it hasn't got big names behind it, or is starring some high profile star, then people don't concentrate fully when watching. Look at all those people who found the Matrix really hard to follow, they thought little of the idea of Keanu Reeves doing sci-fi and didn't give the film their undivided attention, and actually listened and watched, the same with this film. If you see the name Dolph Lundgren and thriller in the same sentance in a straight to videoer most reviewers will be browsing through magazines and popping their head up at intermissions to watch the butt kicking.This isn't exactly original or even exceptionally written in any way, but it follows the rules of good thrillers, the twisting plot, the shady characters, deliberate confusing elements early on to add a sense of mystery. The action was okay but there could have been more, they were pretty short really. I did like Lundgren in this, he is actually playing an interesting person, not just big lump number one.There are a lot better, and with some actual money put into them, but there a lot more worse thrillers than this, I enjoyed it. $$$/$$$$