The Night Agent Review: A Good Story, Fascinating and Intriguing Enough
Cast: Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanan, Hong Chau
Creator: Shawn Ryan
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The Night Agent is a new TV series available on Netflix from Thursday 23 March, consisting of 10 episodes of 45-50 minutes and intended for lovers of action-spy-thrillers. If you have seen TV series like The Recruit if you like products like Jack Ryan or Reacher if you love those generalist TV mysteries that are no longer made (and which were canceled after one season without a solution) The Night Agent is for you. Conspiracies, twists, intrigues and action. There are true all the ingredients to capture the attention and interest of the public in The Night Agent, a new series available on Netflix in ten episodes, created by Shawn Ryan. A series, based on Matthew Quirk’s novel of the same name, which somewhat surprisingly offers one of the funniest and most exciting visions of these weeks, at least judging by the first episodes we’ve seen.
Why yes, the thriller-action series doesn’t invent anything new, but it works properly by giving away a story that the more it goes on, the less you want to stop. A real hymn to binge-watching, thanks to the high pace, but balanced between the action scenes and the moments in which it is necessary to pick up the threads of the speech. As we will tell in our review of The Night Agent, the series has all it takes to become a perfect weekend vision, provided you let yourself be drawn – without asking yourself too many questions – in a narrative of double agents, moles in the FBI and unpredictability.
The Night Agent Review: The Story Plot
Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan) has lost everything: their job, money, and friendships. What she thought was a friend of hers betrayed her irreparably, ruining her life and leaving her on the streets. Back with her uncles, Rose won’t have time to settle in and her life will once again be changed. Without the possibility of explanation, one night she will see her relatives being killed by some assassins. Rose will be able to escape and ask for help from a Night Agent, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), an FBI agent forced to answer night calls from other agents working in the shadows of counterespionage. The reason for his resignation is soon explained: a year ago Peter witnessed an attack in the subway.
Although he did everything to save the lives of innocent people and avoid a massacre, conspiracy groups continue to believe that he was the one who left the explosive device in the carriage. Just like his father, an FBI agent who turned out to be a traitor. Rose and Peter will have to team up not only to save their lives but also – with the help of the President’s chief of staff Diane (Hong Chau), protective of Peter – to unearth a great intrigue that seems to come directly from the FBI and the White House. Gathering clues, running away from hit men who want to eliminate any kind of evidence and testimony, and being forced to live in constant danger, Peter and Rose will discover that they will not be able to trust anyone as they try to unmask the real culprit.
The Night Agent Review and Analysis
The Night Agent does not want to revolutionize the world of spy stories, nor set itself up as something more than an excellent serial product of great entertainment. With a rhythm that never gets boring, the episodes don’t skimp on adrenaline-pumping action sequences (in this sense the first episode is an excellent business card), in twists and turns that play with the viewer, testing him on discovering the identity of the traitor, and in a pleasant enjoyment of the vision that makes you feel immediately “at home”. Because through the pair of leading actors (to which is added a perfect Hong Chau, who we recently saw in The Whale), capable of creating immediate alchemy, The Night Agent immediately reassures the viewer in its basic elements, giving life to two characters who, however respectful of the roles that the story needs, know how to enter the heart of the public. Thanks to some sequences set in the past, the character and personalities of the protagonists will be discovered little by little, binding the spectators even more to the protagonists in an almost magnetic way.
The series reserves more than one surprise (just think that at the end of the second episode, we are already witnessing a strong change in history) so much so that you feel the unnatural need to satisfy your curiosities and continue watching every time you get to the end credits. But what works in The Night Agent, and which compensates for some staging flaws or too much writing ingenuity, is a truly contemporary subtext that seems to be an increasingly necessary topic within the works of fiction of recent years. What gives depth to an entertaining story of espionage and mysteries is, once again, the conflicting relationship between fathers and sons.
In this, Peter’s character seems to speak directly to a young audience, mirroring that insecurity in the relationship with the parent (whether biological or putative) which undermines the complete realization of identity. And, conversely, the vision of the world that The Night Agent gives is that of a society unable to trust others, especially the generations following those to which the world belongs. All that remains, therefore, is to fight, betray oneself, get lost, and flee, until the truth is discovered. Which, in this case, corresponds to knowing who we really are.
The Night Agent doesn’t seek quality, but entertainment for those who want to let themselves be surprised without thinking too much about what is happening, without too much reflection on the credibility or otherwise of some aspects, some choices. Pure entertainment for action-thriller lovers. The series is created by a veteran of the genre like Shawn Ryan who has been behind TV series like The Shield, Lie to Me, and SWAT, capable of mixing general taste with cable action. The whole thing is inspired by a novel of the same name by Matthew Quirk. At the end of the ten episodes the mystery is solved, so don’t be afraid of hanging, but at the same time, the series opens a door to continue with other seasons.
As we said, the strength of the show is in the chemistry and in the relationship of mutual trust that is established between the two young protagonists, who feel they are the last in the food chain but for this very reason, they will encourage each other. Not only that: for both of them it will prove to be a family story, as Rose wants to better understand the secrets of her family and Peter has to face every day being accused of treason precisely for that attack on the subway after his father had been falsely accused of the same offense and had died before he could defend himself.
The past will return to the protagonists’ lives, but the interesting aspect of The Night Agent is that both find themselves in a story and a much larger scheme than themselves. They will have to resort to all their inventiveness and creativity to get out of this mess, to track down the truth that could lurk right in the White House. The two interpreters Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan have been good at building a relationship over the course of the episodes that are born slowly and evolve, without ever forcing their hand and speeding up times, while they learn to trust each other because they cannot trust anyone else, not even their own bosses. And in this, applause goes to Hong Chau who, after the recent The Menu and The Whale, is still quick-change in interpreting the elderly chief of staff of the President of the United States, who always seems sincere and even maternal towards the two but we never understand if underneath she is hiding something.
The Greek tragedy once again dominates these spy stories in which the faults of the fathers (or relatives in general) seem to necessarily fall on the children. The two protagonists are hunted down and therefore begin a race against time, with only a few pits stops along the way, which bring them ever closer to the US government, in a real game of cat and mouse until the end. A dangerous game that has ramifications at the highest levels of the US government and which, once again, after Slow Horses, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and the other serial spy stories mentioned, could have links with the aftermath of the Cold War. Almost an allegory of the generational relationship between young people and adults in today’s society: the former are unable to trust the world that has been left to them, and the latter do not know how to let go and not remain anchored to their traditions.
The direction, entrusted to Seth Gordon, who comes from comedies but also from dramedy hybridizations such as Sneaky Pete and For All Mankind, brings camera movements, details, and staging tricks to the field that well reflect the fresh and compelling nature of the story being told, between chases, shootings, and twists. We hope that Netflix continues this espionage trend with young and charismatic protagonists because in the end, it seems to pay off.
The Night Agent Review: The Last Words
The Night Agent is a ten-episode action thriller series on Netflix that does not intend to revolutionize the genre but to offer a good story, fascinating enough. Objective-centered gave that, thanks to the excellent chemistry between the protagonists and a well-balanced rhythm between action and espionage, the viewer cannot help but remain intrigued, waiting to discover the truth of the intrigue. A spy story that builds on the relationship between the two young protagonists, committed to fleeing and fighting a world of adults who hide more than they tell. We talked about this in the review of The Night Agent, which compares two characters and two generations to bring to light unsuspected truths and a conspiracy taking place in the brightest rooms of the White House.
