An espionage thriller, slick, adrenaline-filled, Agent Zero explores the themes of betrayal, redemption, and sacrifices that one makes in order to work in the backgrounds of international intrigue. It is about Badh, a French secret agent, a formidable one, who is betrayed by her own agency as she tries to eliminate a strong arms dealer in Syria. She is forced into exile and she recreates her life in Morocco in pursuit of peace. Her world is however destroyed once again when her husband Ilias gets shot and put in a coma sending her back to the dark deadly world that she thought she was out of. That she has gone to violence in an attempt to save those that she loves is cruel and emotionally instigating, showing that she is a complicated character of love and vengeance.
The setting of the film in Morocco provides an add of colour and vividness to the story, which is contrasted with the dark and gritty setting. The camera work embraces the streets in the dawn of the sun and the bleak and dangerous scenes and creates a greater danger that can be smelled in the air. Its action sequences are brutal and well-choreographed, highlighting how Alma turns into Badh a ruthless assassin, who can do his job callously and without mercy. The screenplay gives the impression of a tangled web of lies, and the revelation of the past life of Alma, and the relations she had with her previous secret service coworkers, particularly with Joana making the screenplay all the more intriguing and betraying.
The emotional essence of Alma story was the best part as she is so desperately determined to save her loved ones no matter the price, and this involves invoking her dark side. The tone of the film is an equal mix of smooth action and interpersonal reflection that makes it a very powerful story about the price of loyalty and the power of the human heart. The feeling that I got after reading Agent Zero was that I was amazed by the strength that Alma exhibits and that the film is a terrifying look at how far people are prepared to go when they are pushed to the limit.
