SPOILER-FREE PLOT SUMMARY
When four Centro Nacional de Inteligencia agents are killed at the same time, CNI leaders fear the fifth and final member of Operación Ciénaga is next. In an effort to track him down before the enemy does, they force a meeting with Zeta (played by Mario Casas) who’s taking a year off to care for his ailing mother. Zeta reluctantly agrees to help once Elena (Nora Navas) reveals the missing agent is his father (whom Zeta was told as a boy died while on a mission). After putting some hidden clues his father left behind in his backpack, a motorcyclist swipes the bag right off his shoulder while he’s getting in his car. Zeta chases down the thief only to find out it’s a Columbian agent codenamed Alfa (Mariela Garriga) who has an invested interest in the case. the two join forces to try and find Salvador Ancares (Luis Zahera) and solve the puzzle as to why, now, both Spanish and Columbian intelligence agencies would be interested in a nearly four-decades old shooting.
SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
You know you’re about to unravel a bunch of tangled cords when we visit New York, Bangkok, Panama City, Tokyo, Ribeira Sacra and Madrid all in the opening six minutes. And, if that wasn’t enough, Tallin, Rio de Janerio and Bogota are all added to the resume within the first hour.
And then there are the massive two exposition dumps. A half hour in, there’s a 13-minute scene where Ancares is educating Zeta — and the audience — why things have unfolded the way they have. This already nearly quarter-hour long diatribe comes complete with multiple flashbacks that halt any momentum the movie had going for it up until that point. Then, roughly an hour in, there’s another 14-minute scene where Ancares is going through interrogation with Columbia authorities that features yet more explanation and more flashbacks. At least in this one, we also see Zeta is dealing with in another location.
AGENT ZETA is disjointed, that’s the bottom line.
When a film has long, extended scenes of one character explaining the plot to another character, it’s a massive red flag that the writers and director didn’t know how to tell the story in its proper order so they dump all the explanation in one place. Or perhaps there was an overt attempt to keep important information from the audience early on in an effort to make the film feel more “creative.” There are exceptions, sure, but 98 times out of a 100, it doesn’t work.
The only thing saving AGENT ZETA is the performances. Casas is magnetic, Zahera is a natural and Garriga brings understated range. Hell, even Cristina Umaña was a boss in her limited screen time. But the story, the inflated ambition, the exerted effort to be clever and the directing choices all let the cast down.
If you’re looking for a suspenseful action movie to have streaming in the background, AGENT ZETA is a decent choice. But “background viewing” is probably not what the filmmakers had in mind.
JKG SCORE: 5.5 out of 10
Untitled Film Project 