The Secret Agent (2025)
For the second year in a row, Brazil has an entry in the Best Picture category at the Oscars. This year's effort, The Secret Agent, is similar in content and quality to last year's I'm Still Here.
A university researcher in 1977 Brazil going by the name of Marcelo (Wagner Moura) travels across Brazil on the run from forces aligned with the authoritarian government. After settling into a new town, he learns two hitmen (Gabriel Leone, Roney Villela) have been hired to kill him.
The Secret Agent has a great sense of atmosphere and place. There is tension about the danger Marcelo is in (and the danger his makeshift community of refugees are in from other sources), but it all feels real and human-scale. There is also dark humor in how the local media is forced to refer to violent incidents committed by the local police when covering them. Also, a late chase scene is marvelously tense.
However, the final 10-15 minutes of the movie feels like an anti-climax. It is easy to see what writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho is trying to do with it thematically (the past is impossible to truly know), but as drama, it does not feel like a satisfying resolution to the story. There are also other bits, such as a scene with the late Udo Kier, that work fine on their own but aren't necessary in a story that runs 158 minutes.
Overall, The Secret Agent is a thoughtful drama worth
checking out during awards season. A note of warning: while there is not a lot
of violence in The Secret Agent, the violence that exists is extremely
graphic, conforming to the puzzling recent trend that requires that
approximately 90% of R-rated films must try to be gorier than Robocop.
