It is impossible to watch The Secret Agent without seeing at least some of the inspirations behind the scenes. Writer/Director Kleber Mendonça Filho wrote the film over the course of three years and is drawing on filmmakers of the past and present during their outputs in the 1970s. These include, but are not limited to, Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg (especially his work on Jaws), John Boorman, and Brian De Palma. His script is centered around a neo-noir political drama with ties to real historical events, painting a climate of corruption, murder, and people seeking asylum from those empowered to positions of power.
It opens in 1977 with former professor and widower Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) traveling during the carnival holiday to Recife, where his young son, Fernando (Enzo Nunes), is being raised by his in-law, Sr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco). He pulls up at a fuel station to get enough gas for the final leg of the journey, only to find a dead body lying underneath a sheet of cardboard, a thief who was shot the night before and is left out in the elements awaiting the arrival of the local police who have better things to occupy their time. While Armando is getting fueled up, a police car arrives, but not for the body. They are here to look into Armando, himself. He provides them with papers and a pitiful bribe of some cigarettes and is allowed to leave. The police show little to no interest in the body rotting in the sun and being attacked by stray dogs.
Upon arrival in Recife, Armando is taken into a home for refugees from the Brazilian military dictatorship, people who have all sorts of reasons not to be found. He is set up with a job under an assumed name, working in a records office. While there, he tries to find information on his mother, whom he barely knew, and make arrangements to flee the country with his son in tow. But he has been put on a watch list, prohibiting him from leaving the country, necessitating the need for a fake passport. On top of that, two hitmen have been hired to track him down and kill him. Throughout the course of the film, we will learn more about his background and why he is in this position in the first place. All of this is being pieced together in the present day by history student Flavia (Laura Lufési), who has been researching the resistance network through newspaper archives and audio cassettes that were left behind.
I have never been the biggest scholar of history, especially foreign history. It’s not from a lack of interest; it’s just not a subject that speaks to me personally. I go into movies like this blissfully unaware of the historical context and learn about it as I go. This film mercifully doesn’t require you to have pre-knowledge of the real-world events going on during this time, though it will be more rewarding to those who do. The pertinent information is there for the context of the film, just enough so that you are not left confused by the events that are unfolding.
We get all that we need to know about the politics and corruption in that first scene in the form of that body underneath the sheet of cardboard. The sun is baking down, flies are everywhere, and stray dogs try to get at the body while the gas station attendant chases them off, all the while afraid of what will happen to him if he abandons his job. This is horrific stuff and it plays as such, but it also has an edge of dark humor to it. When the police arrive, they barely give a glance at the body on the ground, showing much more interest in Armando and searching his car. This is authority corrupted, perverted by those who gave them that authority. It therefore comes as no surprise that before too long, one of them is asking for a “donation” from Armando. Surprisingly, he is able to bribe them with his few remaining cigarettes, claiming he just spent his last money on the fuel in his tank.
Meanwhile, in Recife, a tiger shark has been captured with a human leg in its belly. This is obviously a part of someone that the authorities wanted to disappear, as the chief of police, the corrupt Euclides (Robério Diógenes) and his sons Sergio and Arlindo are called in to investigate. Not long afterwards, the leg is stolen from the morgue and tossed back into the river, entering into myth as a distraction from the true horrors of what is going on. The legends of the missing leg get printed in the papers for people to read about and laugh.
The Secret Agent is a recreation of a time and place, a facsimile of an era not that long ago. This is the midpoint of a 21-year-long military dictatorship with flourishes of satire and drama. It presents itself to us as is and asks us to meet it on its own terms without holding our hands. When Armando arrives in Recife in that bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle, we don’t know the reasons why, and we aren’t told that for a good long while. Instead, we are asked to piece much of it together as we go, only really learning the truth several hours in. This is accomplished by avoiding flashbacks and because no one wants to address the situation outright lest the wrong person be listening in.
This is an ugly world these characters are living in. From the unseen body under the sheet of cardboard to the wrapped-up corpse in the back of a car, shot and tossed unceremoniously over a bridge, we are seeing a world where life is cheap, and the people here have grown accustomed to living in it. It’s cold and calloused, and we see it all. Some deaths come as punishments dispensed by the military regime; some are the byproduct of random street crime. There is so much of it that people have grown accustomed to it and have learned how to navigate around it. Late in the film, a character is shot in the back of the head in a barber shop. People don’t scatter in fear but gather around to look at the body while the proprietor casually drapes an opened newspaper over the dead man’s head. The camera even makes sure we get a glimpse of the headline on the front of the paper, which gives us an updated death count during the ongoing carnival.
The brilliance of this picture is that, all else aside, virtually everyone in it could be the headliner of their own film. We get glimpses of this in each introduction. The first of these is the elderly Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), who is like the grandmother to all the refugees in her house, taking people in and protecting them. Her backstory is filled with little details that would make a wonderful film in their own right. The same can be said with the tidbits of information we learn from the other refugees. Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) is the leader of a political resistance movement who is working to provide Armando and his son with forged passports. It is her recordings that come into play later with Flavia and her determination to piece together what happened all those years ago. There’s a brief scene where Armando is taken to meet a German Jew, a man with wounds that seem to fascinate the local officials who assume he is a Nazi in asylum. This adds color but little else, though it gives us yet another character that we would love to learn more about. Even the two hitmen, Bobbi (Gabriel Leone) and Augusto (Roney Villela), could lead their own film. There is so little given us about any of these characters, yet we are given enough that we want more. This would make for an intriguing anthology series.
Like so much of real life, this is not going to have a happy ending. But just like real life, things move on, and the world moves with it. The movie theater where Sr. Alexandre worked as a projectionist is now a hospital. Fernando may not have made it out with his father, but he has a successful and happy life in Recife, though he doesn’t really remember his father anymore. The dictatorship has fallen, and Recife is more or less a better place to live in again, but the scars of the old regime are still there, and the people who survived the corruption are still around to remember it. The ending is a bit bittersweet and more than a little melancholic. It’s not the happy ending we wanted, but it is the right ending for this film.
This is one of those films that lingers in the mind without immediately calling out for a rewatch. That’s not damning it with faint praise; I feel the same way about Schindler’s List. It’s one of the best films of the year and, despite being nearly three hours long and grim, it never dragged. This is a film that will take you on an emotional journey if you are willing to let it. That journey is often depressing, sometimes disturbing, sometimes outright strange, but it is a journey well worth the effort.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Emilie Lesclaux
Best Actor: Wagner Moura
Best Casting: Gabriel Domingues
Best International Feature Film: Brazil
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Release Date: November 6, 2025
Running Time: 161 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Roberto Diógenes, Alice Carvalho, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Hermila Guedes, Isabel Zuaa, and Udo Kier
Directed by: Kleber Mendonça Filho
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