In 1977, Brazil was in the midst of a military dictatorship. General Ernesto Geisel led the government and was the fourth military leader since the 1964 coup d’état. Against this political backdrop, Kleber Mendonça Filho gives us The Secret Agent (2025), an intense political thriller that revolves around Marcelo (Wagner Moura), a man trying to escape his past. Through the eyes of Marcelo, the director takes us on a journey that revives the dark past of a nation and, through fiction, tells a story that was the reality for thousands of Brazilians during the dictatorship.

A yellow Volkswagen is driving along a desolate road and arrives at a gas station adorned by a partially covered corpse. The Secret Agent invites us into the turbulent world of Marcelo, our protagonist. Just a few minutes are enough for the director to mesmerize us with his technique and precise handling of tension. That first sequence is pure cinematic mastery, and the film only grows from that point. There’s not a moment where we can pause to catch our breath; the editing is brilliant, and the pace is fluid. We can feel the urgency and tension that Marcelo is experiencing.

The cinematography becomes another character. The texture that the use of Panavision lenses gives the film makes us imagine the celluloid and helps with the aesthetic ambiance and production design to envision that Brazil of 1977. The Secret Agent beats to the rhythm of Wagner Moura, who commands the screen. From his sharp dialogues to his poignant silences, Marcelo is the soul of the movie. The colorful secondary characters escort Moura very well; the allies and villains play fundamental roles and give us several memorable sequences: the gas station, the interview at the cinema, the farewell dinner, the final chase… There are no weak links in Mendonça Filho’s proposal.

Narratively, the director breaks the timelines to show us Marcelo from different perspectives, even taking him out of his era and retrospectively visiting his story from our present. In its purest essence, the film is a political thriller through and through, even finding space for clear nods to movies like Jaws (1975) and Cinema Paradiso (1988). But where the director truly wants to take us is to political criticism and to examine that nefarious past that is trying to replicate itself now with other tactics.

The Secret Agent is a formidable work; it traps us with excellent cinematic execution and its great ability to dialogue with collective memory. Tense, entertaining, and with a shocking ending that, even though we might foresee it, we can’t imagine how the director delivers it to us.