I'm not sure why so many IMDb voters chose to give Provocateur a '1'. The film is well acted (especially by lead Jane March and Nick Mancuso as a justifiably paranoid CIA agent), takes itself seriously, engages in a minimum of silly action movie cliches, and has an incredibly downbeat ending that is almost believable. Sure there's some unnecessary softcore T & A, but even that is relatively tasteful. Worth a look if you like spy flicks.
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JohnSeal17 November 2001
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briandaniel675 July 2004I also do not understand the poor comments I see here. I just watched "Provocateur" and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I'd have to go buy a film student's textbook to see if it is full of genre cliche's or not--if I care to.
Even though the bonehead earlier gave away the ending, it was still filled with tension for me--because I cared about the characters.
I think this is as good as "The Bourne Identity." Not as much action, it's got more drama, but I prefer that anyway.
I must admit the front cover of the video looks extremely like "La Femme Nikita," though. They should put this on DVD. -
This was an awful movie. Basically Jane March was a half-Korean North Korean spy sent by Kim Jong Il to do something horrible to the American forces in South Korea. She becomes a maid for an American military family, they all regard her as being Korean even though she looks more white (I believe the actress is either 1/4 or 1/8 Southeast Asian, not at all Korean), and the teenage boy of the household starts out hating her and ends up sleeping with her. The way Korea and the U.S. military in Korea is depicted is completely insane. Of course, the screenwriter and the director were obviously white men who've never spent a day in Korea prior to this movie and had no intention of showing any real insight into life in Korea for either Koreans or American GIs and instead just tried to fulfill their pathetic Asiaphile fantasies without any regard to how completely unbelievable it made the movie. Anyone who's ever been to Korea will know this is utter garbage. In the end the North Korean honhyol spy-girl gets killed, in an obvious "paying for her sins" way. Very bad film with a made-for-TV feel to it.
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urgrue1 August 1998Miya (Jane March) is a north korean spy who infiltrates an american family under the guise of a housekeeper. Of course she falls in love with the son of her new employer, forcing her to pick sides etc etc blah blah. Aside from Jane March, who is an excellent actress who is completely wasted in this film, the film is very generic and full of cliches. Cardboard characters, cut and paste melodrama, and feeble storytelling make this quite bad. If it wasn't for Jane March it would be completely forgettable.
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ShadySlm14 November 2001I saw only two minutes of this crappy movie, in the two minutes i saw a toy gun, an Audi stripped of its labels because the company was too poor to pay for its rights and a two second explosion that started off in the day time at about high noon and somehow ended up finishing at about sunset. Hmmm you tell me was a lot of time spent on this movie, i dont think so.
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I saw this movie a long time ago, but I remember that this movie was kind of stupid. What really turned me off about it, was that the lead actress was not Korean, nor resembled any Asian race. I think in the movie, she had a Russian mother/father (I don't quite remember)and I think the producers thought that she could pass off as a Euroasian woman.
As an Asian, myself, I don't think it would be really hard to find an Asian actress of the same caliber of March (which is not quite high). She looked plain white next to the other Asian actors.