A lot happened to Lee Majors following the cancelation of his hit series The Six Million Dollar Man<\/i>. Unhappy with the strong-arm tactics he used to get a raise for the show\u2019s fifth (and final) season, Hollywood studio execs had no desire to reward his rebellion by casting him in a major motion picture. Meanwhile, his own attempt to transform himself into a serious action star resulted in The Norseman<\/i>, one of the more laughable period flops the 1970s would ever produce. Steel<\/i> (in which he played a \u201cworld-famous\u201d construction foreman) and the Brazilian\/British co-production, Killer Fish<\/i> (three guesses what that one was about) also failed in their attempts to connect with anyone anywhere.<\/p>\n
His superstar marriage to Farrah Fawcett in shambles, he found himself heading up north, where he engaged in a brief, but memorable dalliance with Karen Kain, Canada\u2019s most famous classical dancer (which served as the very loose basis of his 1984 TV movie, The Cowboy and the Ballerina)<\/i>, and starred in not one, but two tax shelter efforts, Agency<\/i> and The Last Chase<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Of all the films Majors made before his TV career was resurrected by the success of The Fall Guy<\/i>, it\u2019s the first of these two canuxploitation efforts that stands out. Unlike his other post-Steve Austin\/pre-Colt Seavers films, Agency achieves a level of entertaining mediocrity that places it above the others (which range from pretty bad to mind-blowingly awful). It\u2019s also marks one of the only times in his long career where he played a normal, sometimes hapless, human being who didn\u2019t have an awesome theme song or the ability to run really fast in slow motion.<\/p>\n
Watching the film it actually takes a second to adjust to the fact that Peter Morgan, Majors\u2019 character and Agency<\/i>\u2019s protagonist, isn\u2019t a cyborg secret agent or a bounty hunter\/stunt man. With his neatly cropped beard he looks more like the Brawny Paper Towel man than any copywriter I\u2019ve ever seen (and I see one every time I look in the mirror). Thankfully, he transcends the initial implausibility of his appearance through a mixture of humour and sly self-awareness.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a performance choice perfectly in keeping with the film\u2019s strangely light-hearted tone. Sold as a standard conspiracy thriller, Agency