‘Agent Zeta’ Review: Amazon’s Attempt at a Bourne-Style Franchise With Mario Casas Falls Flat

For decades, back in the golden age of Hollywood, studios were almost synonymous with genres—Warner meant gangster films, Universal meant horror, MGM meant musicals. Today, that kind of branding is harder to pin down, beyond the obvious link between Disney and animation. But the Amazon Prime–MGM combo—especially after acquiring the rights to the James Bond franchise—has been steadily building a recognizable identity around espionage. Series like Jack Ryan, Citadel, and The Terminal List all point in that direction. Now, the Spanish division joins in with Agent Zeta, a film that positions Mario Casas as a kind of Galician spin on Bond or Bourne.

Directed by Dani de la Torre, the film opens with four Spaniards being murdered in different corners of the world in mysterious, violent ways. What connects them? Why were they targeted? Casas plays Agent Zeta, a CNI operative pulled out of a self-imposed sabbatical—taken to care for his ailing mother—to investigate the case. Spanish intelligence already knows more than they let on: the victims were tied to a decades-old operation in Colombia known as “La Ciénaga.” And someone is now hunting them down because of it. Their priority is to protect—or at least find before it’s too late—a fifth man, a former agent (Luis Zahera) whose whereabouts are uncertain and whose survival may hold the key to everything.

As the story unfolds, the connections between these characters gradually come into focus—though most viewers will piece them together well before the film reveals them. The script, co-written by De la Torre with Oriol Paulo and Jordi Vallejo, leans heavily on supposed twists that rarely land, undermined both by genre familiarity and by an excess of exposition. There’s a lot of “infodumping,” and it shapes the film’s unusual structure: an opening stretch packed with largely disconnected action sequences, a long middle section dominated by briefing-room explanations between Spanish and Colombian agencies, and a final act that returns to action while stacking up predictable “surprises.”

That first stretch works. Agent Zeta kicks off with energy and a certain stylistic flair, including a tense chase through a Rio de Janeiro favela, and the initial clash between Casas and Zahera has real bite. But once the premise is laid out, the film gets bogged down in endless explanations—about what happened, what’s happening, and what will happen—as if every detail were crucial. It isn’t. The plot is perfectly functional, but also entirely familiar: a long-buried operation from 30 or 40 years ago comes back to haunt everyone involved. Handled with elegance, this kind of Le Carré–style setup can work wonders, and Slow Horses is a recent example of how to do it right. Here, though, spending more than half an hour spelling it all out feels excessive, no matter how much gravitas Zahera brings to his character’s storytelling.

Beyond that, Agent Zeta plays like a by-the-numbers spy thriller, with the expected add-ons: a potential love interest (Cuban-born actress Mariela Garriga, whose Mission: Impossible training shows in her very committed sprinting), a convoluted web involving Colombian drug cartels, ETA, and internal betrayals within the intelligence world. There are solidly executed action sequences, and a clear ambition to launch a Latin-flavored spy franchise. Not coincidentally, much of the film unfolds in Colombia and Brazil, with an international cast to match. Prime Video seems to be testing whether Casas can become an Ibero-American Bond or Jack Ryan—and whether this could be the start of something bigger.

Unfortunately, Agent Zeta is already named after the last letter of the alphabet. And after this, it’s hard to see where they go next.