Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

richwgriffin-227-176635 Ken Loach is one of the greatest filmmakers in the world. This is one of his finest films. Journalist/police procedural combined, with terrific performances, esp. Brian Cox, Frances McDormand and Jim Norton. Cover-ups, intractable positions, a frightening police state in Belfast, a top-notch script, a fast moving story - my only quarrel with these films (The Constant Gardener and The Ghost Writer come quickly to mind) is their downbeat endings - I would prefer for positive endings, even if they are "unrealistic" at this time, it becomes demoralizing for the bad guys to win again and again in these type of films - we need to see the good guys winning because it can become a prophecy of getting people to think outside of their pre-programmed thinking (they are taught incorrectly). This movie is infuriating, which is what it should be. Definitely worth watching!!! (:

Michael Neumann Here's a film guaranteed to satisfy even the most demanding fan of political intrigue, following a massive conspiracy uncovered by a routine investigation into the death of an American civil liberties lawyer in Northern Ireland. Director Ken Loach makes no secret of his anti-occupation bias, but he also takes care to approach the subject with an eye for authenticity rarely seen outside the most unsparing documentary. This is strictly a no-frills thriller: tough, intelligent, complex and all too plausible, combining the best elements of a police procedural with all the compelling ambiguity of an espionage caper. The villains may be cardboard cutouts, and the conspiracy itself perhaps too deeply rooted in classic left-wing paranoia, but the real issue at stake is how otherwise honest defenders of law and order are forced to confront the truth, or not, as the case may be. Stewart Copland's unassuming music score adds just the right touch.

Chris Lawson Whooaa! Slow down, sol1218 from Brooklyn NY.The political scene in the U.K. looked like this: Edward Heath, bachelor leader of the Conservatives, won the election in 1970. He took Britain into the then Common Market in 1973, but called an election in February 1974 when the miners forced him to declare a three-day week.The Tory slogan for the election was: Who governs Britain? The result was confused, but the message was fairly clear: Not you, matey. Labour under Harold Wilson took office with a slim majority. Wilson called a second election in October, which he won narrowly, increasing his majority slightly.He held a referendum on the Common Market in 1975, which he won by sidelining the extremists of both Left and Right. He ruled until 1976 when he resigned from politics, for reasons which were obscure at the time, but probably because he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's. It is certainly true that the Right plotted endlessly against him.Jim Callaghan, who had been Chancellor, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, took over as P.M. and called an election after his full five-year term. (In the U.K. governments normally call elections after four years.) In fact Callaghan was forced to do so because of a move by the Scottish Nationalists. Had he called the election just a year earlier, he stood a good chance of winning, say many pundits.Meanwhile, the Conservatives had deposed Edward Heath who had lost them two elections, and Maggie Thatcher replaced him as leader. She swept to power in 1979, and as we all know, won the next two elections.Economic chaos was the watchword of the day and there were many strikes. The situation in Northern Ireland, which had started simmering with the Civil Rights movement of 1968, gradually deteriorated. The assassinated politician of the film whose name is Nevin, may well represent Airey Neave, a war hero who had escaped from the high-security Colditz Castle, a German-speaking lawyer who had attended the Nuremberg Trials and a hardline Conservative with military and security connections, who was a close adviser of Thatcher. He was blown up outside the House of Commons on March 30, 1979, by the INLA a few weeks before the election.Ken Loach has never made any secret of his sympathies for the Irish cause. His powerful film "Wind that shakes the barley", which apparently did not make much money in the U.K., had Conservative politicians fulminating about treason and lack of patriotism because of his portrayal of the brutal Black and Tans. The name was given to the ex-British army personnel and (inaccurately) also to the auxiliaries who were sent to Ireland between 1920 and 1921 to crush the IRA and Sinn Fein, but who also attacked and killed civilians. Historians agree, however, that Loach was pretty accurate in his historical recreation. The film also shows the ruthlessness of Irish-on-Irish killings in the Civil War afterwards.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Top notch political thriller set in Northern Ireland that goes well beyond the conflict in that troubled British controlled province and into the heart and policy making of the British Government itself. After American human rights activist Paul Sullivan, Brad Dourif, was gunned down together with his Irish contact Molloy, Brian McCann,by the British police outside of Dungannon an official inquiry is brought in on the case with high ranking British law enforcement officers Kerrigan & Maxwell, Brian Cox & John Benfield.Kerrigan getting in touch with Sullivan's friend and colleague in the American human rights group Ingrid Jessner, Frances McDormand,finds out from her that Sullivan together with Molloy were to meet with this mysterious stranger Harris, Maurice Roeves. The meeting with Harris was to be about the authenticity of a tape he had made that was in the possession of Sullivan that seemed to have disappeared from the shooting sight.Jessner get's some information from a secret I.R.A, which it turns out that the late Molloy was a member of,source that the tape contained such explosive information that if made public can unseat the Thatcher regime and bring a number of very high government officials to the bar of justice on charges of treason against the state. Jessner together with Kerrigan gets in touch with the author, Harris, of the incriminating tape at a secret I.R.A meeting hall in Belfast. It turns out that Harris is not only British but a former member of the super-secret UK intelligence agency M15. Harris tells both Jessner and Kerrigan that the deaths of Sullivan and Molloy wasn't, as the official report states, self-defense on the polices part but cold-blooded murder. Harris goes on with what was on the missing tape that Sullivan had on him, that was not in the report. Harris revelations are so shocking that it get's the usual by the book Kerrigan to not only risk his career as a police officer but his life to uncover it. Top members of the British Government had created a shadow/agency answerable only to themselves. This secret agency helped to destroy the previous Edward Heath left to center Conservative Party that controlled Britian during the 1970's and had it replaced, by defeating Heath in the 1975 Conservative party's election, with the ultra-right wing Conservative Margerat Tatcher who's completely under their control. Forming secret death-squads these usurpers behind the throne, or Tatcher Regime, have been pulling off a number of political assassinations all over Britian, as well as in the Irish Republic. Their main purpose was to silence anyone they feel threatened by and if murder doesn't do the trick, like in the case of Officer Kerrigan, personal or political blackmail will.The movie "Secret Agenda" get's a bit unbelievable with Kerrigan agreeing to go all the way in retrieving the important tape, that Harris duplicated, with Jessner. Kerrigan in effect chickens out at the last moment and leaves her out in the cold as he goes to his superiors in the British Police. Kerrigan tells them everything about his and Jessner's, who Kerrigan kept in the dark about all this, upcoming meeting with Harris who's to hand over the secret tape to them the next day at Dublin's O'Connell Bridge!Jessner's meeting with Harris turns into a disaster with him being grabbed by M15 agents who were tipped off, in his being unknowingly double-crossed, by a very naive Kerrigan who should have known better! Beaten and handcuffed Harris is quickly put in a van where he's later shot and killed and his murder made to look like the work of the I.R.A. During all this confusion Jessner gets away from the perusing M15 agents and is later confronted at the Belfast Airport, where she plans to get out of the country, by Kerrigan. Asking Jessner if she has the tape that Harris was to give to her Kerrigan get an unequivocal no answer from her and as both he and his partner Maxwell leave and Jessner goes on her flight back to the US the film goes into freeze-frame and ends. Irgrid Jessner learned a lot from what she herself saw in Northern Ireland and heard from Harris & Co. The most important revelation that Jessner got from all that is never to trust anybody in government, including the very helpful at times Kerrigan. Jessner in fact did have Harris' tape and listening to it in her car on the way to the airport made up her mind that the British people had been hoodwinked long enough. Whats more they deserves to know the truth about what their government is doing in their name and will make sure that they'll find that out by making the contents of Harris' tape public through the free and open American media: that's if they'll have both the guts and foresight to print or broadcast it!