Hidden Agenda

British filmmaker Ken Loach's long and rich career has been spent taking on social and political issues in films featuring compassionate portraits of everyday citizens struggling to get by in difficult situations, ultimately serving up provocative criticisms of injustice and inequities. Hidden Agenda (1990), set in a violent Northern Ireland, is one of the director's most challenging films, a drama centered on the killing of a civil liberties activist by British security forces. Frances McDormand and Brad Dourif star as American human rights workers investigating allegations of illegal detention and torture of Irish citizens, with Brian Cox as the steadfast British police detective who arrives after the murder creates an international uproar. As the title suggests, there is more behind this investigation than a single act of police brutality: what is eventually revealed is a political conspiracy with tentacles reaching to the highest levels of power. Inspired by a true incident, the film plays like a British answer to Costa-Gavras's classic Z, another film about a politically sensitive investigation undercut by the government. The suggestions of a vast conspiracy do distract a bit from the real-life politics of violence and oppression in Belfast, but this is nonetheless an effective and compelling movie, overall, and one that was very controversial in Britain. A Cannes Film Festival prize-winner, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)