TV: The Night Agent (2023)

Could an insurrectionist plot be covertly led from inside the White House?

Rose (Luciane Buchanan) and Peter (Gabriel Basso) looking out for the hired killers

The Night Agent (2023)

Streaming on Netflix (10 one-hour episodes)

Who doesn’t enjoy an action story that keeps you guessing?  But The Night Agent did more than just puzzle me.  It provoked and dazzled.  I was on the edge of my seat throughout.  Come on, I kept yelling at the screen, tell me more!

The multi-layered story begins with a foolproof dramatic hook:  a public bomb blast.  Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), a young FBI agent on board a crowded Washington D.C. subway, watches a man lay a backpack under a seat, then stealthily move away.

Sensing trouble, Peter quickly opens the backpack, discovers a ticking bomb, pulls the emergency brake and shouts to the passengers to get off.  They leap into the subway tunnel just before a massive explosion fills the air with flames and smoke.

Peter runs after the escaping bomber, wrestles him to the ground, but the culprit gets away.  We gather that the fleeing stranger and the underground blast are going to haunt Peter.

Cut to a year later:  Peter’s been rewarded with an “important” but dull job.  He’s a Night Agent on the 8pm to 4am shift in a windowless room in the basement of the White House.

Only a select handful of field agents, all on rare sensitive assignments, have been given Peter’s number to call in case they’re in danger.  Alas, the phone never rings.

Until he gets a frantic call from Rose (Luciane Buchanan), who’s just seen her beloved aunt and uncle murdered, with the killers at that very moment closing in on her.  Just before her uncle died, he gave Rose Peter’s top secret phone number.

She can’t comprehend what Peter quickly grasps, that her aunt and uncle were spies on a critical mission.  Whenever a covert operation has been compromised Peter must follow a standing order:  immediately call White House chief of staff Diane Farr.

This powerful, wily official is played by Hong Chau (Oscar-nominated for The Whale) in a blazing performance, easily the most gripping in the series.

Hong Chau plays tough-as-nails White House chief of staff Diane Farr

Farr is the tough Washington insider who after the bomb blast hired Peter as a protege.  She sternly orders him to find Rose and bring her in.

But once Peter locates Rose, she isn’t about to follow instructions from Farr.  She’d overheard her aunt and uncle say that someone in the White House wasn’t, under any circumstances, to be trusted.

Could that person, she wonders aloud to Peter, be Farr?

Her aunt and uncle also left a clue to where they’ve hidden a hard drive with details of their secret mission.

Rose vows that until she gets her hands on that hard drive, she won’t go near the White House.  Who could she trust there?

Also, she’s a computer analyst and believes the hard drive will reveal exactly who her aunt and uncle were working for, information someone in the White House won’t want to come out.

Even more worrying is the fact that she saw the face of one of her aunt and uncle’s killers, and he saw hers.  She convinces Peter that the killers now need to eliminate her.  And could take down Peter while they’re at it.

The pair’s suspicions seem credible.  The more we peer into the White House, the more we share Rose’s misgivings.

The Vice President (Christopher Shyer) is skulking about asking too many questions.  So is the deputy FBI director.

And the VP’s rebellious teenage daughter Maddie (Sarah Desjardins) is sneaking off to conduct an affair with an art professor whose sinister intentions she’s too smitten to recognize.

Two other couples also keep the action moving.  The killers (Phoenix Raei and Eve Harlow) are viciously proficient in dealing death.  Yet she wants them to settle down and raise a child while he believes the paid assassin’s lifestyle isn’t suitable for nest-building.

Beady-eyed and cold-blooded, Harlow gives a chilling yet weirdly ardent performance.

She seems full of the life force, yet she’s gleefully merciless when she takes a life.  Harlow’s bravura acting is nearly as mesmerizing as Chau’s.

The other pairing is within the Secret Service.  Young Chelsea Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola) is slowly building her reputation as she protects the VP’s daughter Maddie.

Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola) and Monks (D.B. Woodside) on Secret Service duty

She’s ordered to work with veteran Erik Monks (D.B. Woodside), who’s struggling to resurrect his rep after taking a bullet for a former president.  His slow physical rehab means the relatively low-level assignment suits him fine for the moment.

Which means the ambitious rising star and the weary but wise old hand must learn to trust one another.  And thereby save lives.  Both actors make their characters’ gradual harmony moving and credible.

Powerfully mounted sequences keep the action humming.  Early on, a terrifying car chase on a rainy night, including some scarily well-aimed gunfire, had my heart racing.

Even better is a showdown on a gigantic lot filled with dozens of enormous storage shelters.  As the shooters bob and weave between three-storied silos, everyone’s life seems instantly expendable.

The camera work and cutting here are riveting.  It’s one of the best-edited sequences I’ve seen, with guns blazing, hardly any place to hide, and bodies close to taking a fatal bullet any second.

The convoluted plot does require careful attention.  There were moments when I wasn’t sure who was toting a gun for which stakeholder – and who was on the right or wrong side of the law.

But the plot’s intricacies are resolved by the end.  I especially liked the way the U.S. president (Kari Matchett) is so adroitly kept at a distance.

We had to be asking ourselves:  Could she be the overweening menace in the White House?  The question hangs tantalizingly over the entire series.

The plot keeps expanding, and as the moody cinematography makes you wonder exactly what you’re seeing, the deft editing cuts you off seconds before you had – or so you hoped – the enigma figured out.

But I was never so bewildered that I wasn’t leaning forward to see what would happen next.  And I felt curiously invigorated at the end.

The creator and Netflix have already promised a Season 2.  That’s good news.  These people know how to make tight, modestly scaled action rock.