This is a bit of a dog's breakfast all round. Clearly intended as a spoof on the James Bond franchise which was just establishing itself it trails a bad nowhere to the likes of Derek Flint (James Coburn) and Matt Helm (Dean Martin) who quickly joined the bandwagon although even highly polished, sophisticated spoofs such as these came and went within a decade proving there was little mileage in the genre. The plot - and I use the word loosely - requires Dirk Bogarde to portray a layabout content to live on the dole whilst masquerading as a writer who is gullible enough to believe he is trainee executive material on the strength of a ten minute 'interview' and a Swiss cheese where a CV should be. Nor does he find too much wrong with being whisked to Prague within hours of starting his new job. Best of the support comes from Robert Morley as an M-wannabee who makes it as far as about F whilst Richard Pascoe ensures the mahogany content is in the high nineties. It's all pretty harmless and mildly diverting but if they churned out something like this with lottery money today they'd risk being lynched.
Review of Agent 8 3/4
