The Brits may have popularized the feminine fury as assassin/secret agent via the James Bond films and the Diana Rigg-led “Avengers” on TV. World cinema — from America to Asia — took inspiration from that.
But it was the French, led by action auteur Luc Besson, who built a whole genre around such characters, thanks to “La Femme Nikita,” “Anna” and “Columbiana.”
“Agent Zero” is a sturdy, action-packed and seriously predictable outing built around the model-turned-actress Marine Vacth. She plays a killer of few words, an agent of Alpha, an elite unit of the French security forces sent in whenever and wherever “enemies of France” must be taken out.
We meet Badh (she’s almost never called by name) when she’s sent into Syria to kill an arms dealer, and the many ISIS minions he has protecting him from the world. She kicks, clubs and pistols her way through them, and past their families — women and children — to complete this solo slaughter.
But she seems to ignore the “clean the zone” orders from her boss Joanna (Emmanuelle Bercot), who is watching all this with her satellite surveillance team back in Escargotvia. An agent in Arabic attire exchanges a look with black body-suited Badh in the street before he blows up the place to “finish the job.”
Seven years later, Badh’s happy, kite-surfing life with a cop-husband (Salim Kéchiouche) in Morocco is derailed when a Moroccan mob family tries to kill her husband. Her past has circled back around on her, and her “particular skills” will be needed again as she sets out to wipe out the family and its patriarch (Slimane Dazi), no matter what her former bosses think of her “going rogue” (in French with English subtitles, or dubbed) and the blowback that could lead to.
Vacth’s brief online biography makes note of a teen passion for judo, which makes the French beauty uniquely suited to this role. But when you’re given little dialogue and you’re playing a trained killer, there isn’t much room for emoting, human frailty or sexuality. The character delivers beatings and takes them, but there’s no sign of an interior life.
The villains — French, Syrian and Moroccan — are similarly stone-faced. A captured snitch may snivel and a French rug-merchant/go-between (Lionel Abelanski) may plead for his life as they’re “questioned,” but as a general rule, director Guillaume de Fonatanay is more interested in the next brawl, motorbike chase or shootout.
The “situation room” scenes of spy satellite images and the like have become a cliche of the spy genre, as has the enduring myth of the “surgical strike” and how they’re portrayed.
Taken at face value, “Agent Zero” isn’t bad, but it is heartless. The stakes are low and our we never really fear for our heroine as she seems invulnerable, if not exactly invincible. With this one, you come for the fights, sniping and shootouts and not much else.
Rating: unrated, violence and lots of it
Cast: Marine Vacth, Emmanuelle Bercot, Slimane Dazi, Niels Schneider, Grégoire Colin and
Lionel Abelanski
Credits: Directed by Guillaume de Fontanay, scripted by Alexandre Coquelle and Matthieu Le Naour. A Saban Films release.
Running time: 1:25
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