Provocateur

A North Korean spy goes undercover in the home of a colonel, posing as a maid in order to uncover military secrets. She soon falls in love with the colonel’s son and is forced to choose between her career as an agent and her love affair with an American man. Jane March, Nick Mancuso, Cary Hiroyuki-Tagama, Lillo Brancato, Jim Donovan., Jane March (Color of Night) stars in this entertaining thriller as a North Korean spy working in the South Korean home of an American military man and his family. Half espionage thriller and half trashy coming-of-age story, the film spends as much time on March’s budding romance with the teenage son (Stephen Mendel) as it does with her growing conflict over carrying out the agenda of Kim il Sung. Nick Mancuso turns in a campy, over-the-top performance as a crippled CIA specialist brought in to plug the nearby base’s sudden security leak, and genre fans will be happy to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa in another sneering villain role. Despite its pretentiously arty flashback and dream sequences, Provocateur is popcorn junk, but it’s a lot of fun.