On some level, it was surprising that the Golden Globe award for best actor went to Brazilian Wagner Moura for his starring role in The Secret Agent. Moura, perhaps best known as the sleekly sinister Pablo Escobar in TV’s Narcos, delivers a commanding but subtle and nuanced performance as a professor-turned-dissident during the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 1970s — a “period of great mischief” — with few of the scene-stealing cathartic bits that standard Oscar/Globes bait is often made of. (It makes more sense that he nabbed best actor at Cannes last year).
And Moura’s work in the film perfectly mirrors what gives The Secret Agent its secret power, a power that expands the more you think about it after the screening. Writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s stunning yet sneak-attack-like film, a chronology-twisting thriller of political intrigue and chockablock with pop/film references of Brazilian music — a rich and bubbling tapestry of a playlist (hear it here) — and American cinema. The film basks in and toys with the essence of ‘70s culture, without distracting from the empathetic narrative at play.
At the cryptic heart of this narrative is Moura’s character Armando, a professor now in hiding with a new identity in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife, there to bond with his son while staying in a refuge for “orphans” — fugitives, refugees, and other outcasts. The grand dame of the house is the wise Dona Sebastiana (played by great Brazilian actress Tânia Maria). A subplot zeroing in on his path involves a pair of ruthless and sometimes bumbling mercenary hit men. The twain shall meet, we assume. But assumptions can be ambiguous in the film’s shrewdly slippery plot.
The film’s ambient backdrop of the revelry of Carnival time in Brazil sets up a point of departure and contrast, where joyful abandon rubs up against mayhem and murder, and dislodged civility becomes both a gesture of escapism and an existential razor’s edge.
The Secret Agent poses a sly and knowing question: When is a spy movie not a spy movie — or not only a spy movie? Anything but your average Hollywood spy yarn, The Secret Agent ingeniously juggles attention on life under a brutal Latin American regime with dollops of pop culture that both defang the ugliness and expand the film’s sensory vocabulary. Its very title accesses an ironic wink, referring to a kitschy British television show from the ‘60s — originally called “Danger Man” but repackaged and caught in quick sight gags in the film. Other recurring motifs include Jaws — partly relating to the oceanfront city of Recife, known for shark attacks, and partly in sync with Spielberg’s careful ratcheting of tension in his film — and The Omen, on another, more visceral level, screening in a movie theater where characters lurk in The Secret Agent.
In terms of the film’s own code of cinematic conduct, there are brief but intense bursts of ultra-violence, especially in the climax, but much of the suspense-geared tension is brewing beneath the surface or around the corner from the visible action. We also see the after-effects of violence — a trick also deployed in No Country for Old Men — from the mysterious dead body on the ground in the opening scene to other shots of bodies deprived of their livelihood before the camera gets to them. The tacit message: What is artfully implied can be as powerful, or more so, than the grisly or sensational deeds themselves.
It is not for nothing that The Secret Agent has earned its place in a wealth of Top Ten lists in the 2025 film crop (including this humble scribe’s). Filho has created an utterly fresh variation on the espionage genre, where kitsch meets true emotion, political indignation, and semi-true history. And did we mention he sneaks in Chicago’s timeless dentist office classic “If You Leave Me Now,” with an effect both ironic and emotionally poignant? That layering feat is, in a small way, evocative of larger and deeper cinematic feats pulled off by this quirky gem of a film.
The Secret Agent is currently screening at SBIFF’s Riviera Theatre. For showtimes, see https://ticketing.uswest.veezi.com/sessions/?siteToken=2bd6rq184k0f0rt2kpz2cx92vg
Watch the official trailer, here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UfrzDKrhEc
