I spent years observing and analyzing the myth of intelligence agents. I chased the image sold by Hollywood — James Bond with his elegance, Ethan Hunt with his impossible stunts, Jason Bourne with his cold calculation. The promise was always the same: agents with class, futuristic technology, and moves executed to the millimeter. I recently watched films like The Amateur (2025) and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025), among many others. I was deceived. In reality, agents are nothing like this. They are a caricature.
Many have high IQs, speak several languages, show off diplomas and top-level training. But IQ is not strategic intelligence. IQ is not vision. In practice, they fail to anticipate obvious moves, live as hostages of bureaucracy, rotten hierarchies, and internal intrigues. They are like expensive computers running obsolete software.
They often get in through connections, favors, or family ties — not real merit. The result: mediocrity disguised as elite. They lack intuition, they can’t read body language, they don’t understand people. The difference between myth and reality is grotesque: cinema shows class, precision, and cunning; in real life, what you see is banality. Agents tripping over their own operations, chasing ghosts, wasting resources spying on irrelevancies, and letting the essential slip away. On screen, they look like invisible gods. In reality, they are arrogant nobodies, convinced they know something — a depressing version of Mr. Bean.
In the end, all the same: vain puppets, convinced they control the board, when in reality they are nothing but disposable pieces. And don’t be fooled: beyond incompetence, they are corrupt. They sell information, they sell protection, they sell silence. Corruption seeps through everything, from top to bottom. They are not guardians of the law, they are merchants of influence.
The saddest part is realizing that the cinematic image never existed. There is no glamour, no honor, no superhumans. Only weak flesh, vices, limitations, fears. In the end, they are mortal. And when the mask is ripped off, what remains is nothing but a pathetic bunch of puppets playing a role to keep the illusion of power alive.
August 2025
This article is in English. Read the Portuguese version ⇒ Ler em português