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Hidden City

1987

Beneath the city streets lie government secrets. File #7 is missing... Pray they don't find it.

Cassies Stuart leads the uncooperative Charles Dance into a world of misplaces government secrets, capalistic artists and bungling secret agents. Will the truth be out, or will the attempts of agents suppress the truth hidden within government propaganda films, classified as top secret by complete mistake, be successful. Or is it the mysterious medical records that are the true catch of the spies.

Charles Dance Cassie Stuart Bill Paterson Richard E. Grant Alex Norton Tusse Silberg Saul Jephcott Wendy Nottingham Michael Müller Michelle Fairley

Country

Language

English

Genres

Mystery Thriller

Theatrical

24 Jun 1987

UK18

UK

24 Jun 1987

Theatrical18 Source: IMDB

108 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Dmitry_Karpyuk ★★★

Британский параноидальный триллер 80-х про то, как активная девица втягивает скучного бюрократа Чарльза Дэнса в поиски неких архивных документальных пленок, где запечатлено преступление (привет, "Фотоувеличение"). Подземный Лондон, сны про перенос снов на видео (привет, Кроненберг), свалки и заброшенные здания, мутные агенты. Режиссер разбавил паранойю юмором и китчевыми сценами, и местами кино даже напоминает Бенекса, но с британским колоритом. Конец с разгадкой только несколько сдутый, и всё равно этот фильм достоин культового статуса и уж точно куда большей популярности. Дебют не только режиссера Стивена Полякова, внука изобретателя слуховых аппаратов Иосифа Лазаревича Полякова, но и Ричарда Гранта-Эстерхёисена, который в этом же году снялся и в Withnail and I.
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

Very 80s paranoid fantasy with bureaucrat Charles Dance getting lost in the search for a mysterious missing film which as the tittle suggest comes with a very heightned world to pçlayoff its intentional flat leading man. Director Poliakoff has a good feel for absurdist touches and Dancing reaction time to everythig around him mostly carries the film. It can be a bit of closed off conception, but I like this kind of mannered filmmaking and there's something very pleasing at watch this under a British context.
Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★½

Maggie's in the Mud: 80s and 90s British Cinema Project
It's been a little disheartening, upon investigating more of Stephen Poliakoff's work over the last couple of years, that his output was choppier than I expected. Although I enjoyed Hidden City, as a film it would actually be a pretty good summing up of his work.
His dialogue reminds me a little bit of a British David Mamet. If he has the right actors in place, they can make the occasionally unusual and unreal sound to it work well with their characters and the plot. If he doesn't, it can sound stilted and weird. There's a mix here in Hidden City. Charles Dance, a consummate thespian, makes it sound fine.…
Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★ 3

This directorial debut from Stephen Poliakoff bears all the hallmarks of his usual preoccupations and themes - secrets, shady intelligence communities, conspiracy theories, the idea of an event being preserved forever in film or photograph like a fossil - but fails to stand the test of time.
Charles Dance - the best thing about this - plays a straitlaced academic and statistician who find himself thrown together with Cassie Stuart's obsessive, wild teenager. She's witnessed something strange on some old film, a woman being kidnapped, and needs his help tracking down the truth. Poliakoff delights in the 'Hidden City' of the title, the secret underbelly of London, with scenes taking place in many abandoned, long forgotten areas of the capital…
Review by jrhovind ★★★

Anticipating some of China Miéville’s novels in its own strait-laced yuppie way, James’s discovery of the London he thought he knew as a dense palimpsest of open secrets and buried stories and malevolent plots. “This place, this city, is bulging with forgotten things!” Watching an innocuously misplaced video (“A guide to breeding cattle in Suffolk in 1941”) ends up like slipping down an ever-changing rabbit hole, a loosely connected string of historical recorded street scenes maybe adding up to a murder or maybe just adding up to a portrait of who really runs the city. “See also – Hop pickers in Kent!” Poliakoff is so dizzyingly in love with piling on oneiric details – a childhood trauma inexplicably returned, a…
Review by Liam Pulles ★★★ 1

(6/8 is "Good")
This film creeped in on me. It's the kind of film that only makes sense in the middle of the night - where amateur detectives chase their own tails down secret parts of London and get involved in a very minor film conspiracy.
It's disappointing and yet somewhat fitting that the only available copy of this film is a low-res Youtube video.
Review by Rosie Lighters ★½

- a terrible movie made in the time that they tried to make an action star out of Charles Dance
Review by shades65 ★

Shouty, screamy actress, Charles Dance and a creepy toddler (but not deliberately)
A cameo from Richard E Grant and lots of locations around London does not a good movie make. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Review by Vivian ★★ 2

People think there's one reality but there's loads of them, all snaking off, like roots. And what we do on one path affects what happens on the other paths. Time is a construct. People think you can't go back and change things, but you can, that's what flashbacks are, they're invitations to go back and make different choices. When you make a decision, you think it's you doing it, but it's not. It's the spirit out there that's connected to our world that decides what we do and we just have to go along for the ride. Mirrors let you move through time. The government monitors people, they pay people to pretend to be your relatives and they put drugs…

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Where to watch

Hidden City

Synopsis

Beneath the city streets lie government secrets. File #7 is missing... Pray they don't find it.

Cast

Director

Writer

Casting

Composer

Studio

Country

Language

Genres

Releases by Date

Theatrical

24 Jun 1987

Releases by Country

UK

24 Jun 1987

Popular reviews

Where to watch

Hidden City

Synopsis

Beneath the city streets lie government secrets. File #7 is missing... Pray they don't find it.

Cast

Director Director

Writer Writer

Casting Casting

Composer Composer

Studio

Country

Language

Genres

Theatrical

24 Jun 1987

UK

24 Jun 1987

Popular reviews

Director

Writer

Casting

Composer