The Secret Agent

As this Brazilian film declares from its opening scene, 1977 marked a “time for great mischief” in the country. With a military dictatorship widening its authoritarian palm, university professor Marcelo (Wagner Moura) is fleeing the regime to a safe house in Recife. But time is running out in the midst of sleazy, corrupt cops and a sweat-soaked Carnival.

Wagner Moura (and his expressive eyes) lead this emotional, subversive thriller. Don’t let the title fool you. Wagner Moura’s Marcelo is no undercover James Bond. In fact, the more he stays away from action, the better it is for his son and the anti-state rebels aiding him. And perhaps that’s where writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filhos shines, as he’s not fixated with aestheticising a “resistance” as we’re used to in relatively sanitised Hollywood political thrillers. Marcelo himself doesn’t wish to topple the regime altogether, but as this former academic is compelled to face fire for his work and his ideas, even the act of living becomes political. It’s not that The Secret Agent doesn’t offer adrenaline-spiking, nail-gnawing moments of tension, but the film also succeeds in offering enough breathing space for its unfortunate protagonist. So, when the cops tail Marcelo in the middle of celebratory processions, it recalls a neo-noir building up to a bloody shootout. But in its more silent moments, when Moura just allows his solemn gaze and muted sighs to do the talking, that’s when you truly grasp the extent to which this everyman has been pushed by a state entrenched in armed power and capitalistic gains. Following up on his 2023 neo-Western Bacarau, Filhos is an ambitious storyteller pairing a changing country with a changing man for a nearly 3-hour-long era-hopping adventure. But Moura’s lead act is equally influential in injecting a human soul into the politics of it all. Gone are the days when the actor was just synonymous with the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in Narcos. Having already proved his mettle to non-Brazilian audiences with the 2023 A24 hit Civil War, Moura returns to his home country for a comeback that rightfully deserves all the awards acclaim. Even if Timothée Chalamet might toot his horn on the Oscar stage with his subversion of the all-American hero in Marty Supreme, Moura deserves equal (or arguably more) buzz for redefining what it means to be a “secret agent” in an age of hopelessness.

A thrilling sun-drenched cocktail of political censorship, police corruption, and urban myths, with even some room for escapist cinema. Despite Moura leading the charge, Filhos has filled his film and his city with enough color and energy to rarely ever deliver a dull moment. For the average non-Brazilian viewer, the color might be obvious in the summery pastels, the characters’ tropical shirts, and the shimmering carnival sequences. But on a more human level, the color comes out with its ensemble, a ragtag bunch of teachers, retirees, activists, and just ordinary people still holding onto their spine against the system. Even the yellow journalism of the era is vibrant enough to draw some chuckles in the dark times. Either controlled by the state or motivated by exaggerated headlines, the papers of Recife are shown to be running tall tales like a “dismembered foot hunting down couples at night”, an urban myth that’s brought to life in creature feature style with stop-motion animation. If the scarred shark-bitten leg isn’t enough for the zany metaphors of state censorship over civilians, there’s also Marcelo’s son’s obsession with Jaws. Steven Spielberg’s summer blockbuster can be heard and seen continuously throughout the film at Recife’s ornate, palatial movie houses, offering little escapism to our on-the-edge protagonists. Filhos - who himself hails from Recife and previously captured the city’s now-defunct cinemas in his documentary Pictures of Ghosts - also neatly ties the past with the present, not just with the changing architecture of the city but a subplot involving modern archivists piecing together Marcelo’s run from the law. Brimming with a plethora of narratives and leaving enough room for interpretation, The Secret Agent is a definitive portrait of Recife: one that doesn’t just offer a likeable underdog hero in exile over here, but one that also paints the everyday urban chaos unfurling without him in the centre.