Rating: R | Runtime: 158 minutes
Release Date: October 25th, 2025 (Brazil) / November 26th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Vitrine Filmes / Neon
Director(s): Kleber Mendonça Filho
Writer(s): Kleber Mendonça Filho

I am not a violent person. But this man … I’d kill him with a hammer.

I love a title with the power to feed into how you interpret the story on-screen. Because Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent isn’t actually about a secret agent. Every synopsis reveals this truth by explaining that Marcelo (Wagner Moura) is a technology expert returning to his hometown of Recife to claim his son and flee the country. If, like me, you hadn’t read a description, however, you would believe the opposite. This is a mysterious man in hiding who engages in clandestine phone calls as hitmen hunt him. Why wouldn’t he be a spy?

The sole mention of the titular occupation comes via a theater screen for a period specific movie that would have been shown in Brazil circa 1977 (when audiences weren’t scared out of their wits by The Omen). And since we don’t learn about Marcelo’s technology background until almost halfway through the run-time, why not embrace the excitement of wondering when his friendly demeanor will turn ice cold. Who will be his first victim? The hitmen (Gabriel Leone and Roney Villela)? A corrupt police chief (Robério Diógenes’ Euclides)? Someone else?

These were the questions running through my head as the always calm and collected Marcelo makes his journey to Recife (those who’ve seen Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts will recognize the city and its architecture). Here I was inferring upon his PTSD after seeing a dead body in the parking lot of a gas station (just before a police officer seemingly hopes to find contraband in his car so he can steal the vehicle for himself) and guessing at the missions keeping him from his son (and, perhaps, killed his wife), when everything is turned on its head.

This occurs by finally understanding who Marcelo is in the context of Brazil’s political turmoil and from Filho throwing a wrench in the narrative by shifting us to the present day without warning. Things don’t go off-the-rails crazy like in Bacurau, but there’s enough uncertainty and silliness (the infamous “hairy leg”) to force you to prepare for the kitchen sink. That The Secret Agent conversely proves to be a rather straightforward drama steeped in historical memory and scars might be the biggest surprise of all.

It’s by no means less impactful for it, though. Marcelo and the other refugees (“We don’t use that word.”) living under Sebastiana’s (Tânia Maria) roof are fighting for their lives in an attempt to stay out of prison or worse because of who they are. The joke is made that they’ve been accused of being communists and anarchists and who knows what else so often that they forget the order since the labels themselves are a mere formality for an oppressive government seeking to silence dissent. Their existence is their crime.

Filho utilizes the mystery surrounding Marcelo and the reasons why a man like Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli) would put a bounty on his head to have fun mocking the former regime’s corruption while also alluding to its danger. Yes, the “hairy leg” delivers a wild monster movie aside, but it also provides a deft entry point for both Marcelo’s son (he really wants to see Jaws) and Chief Euclides. Its MacGuffin even goes so far as to help put the latter onto the same path as our hitmen—this rotting appendage guiding us through Recife’s streets.

We meet friends of the resistance playing their part to stay close to the villains and gather information (Buda Lira’s Anísio). There are the risk takers like Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) doing the work to smuggle people out and gather intel to hopefully be used to prosecute the real criminals. And don’t think the late Udo Kier’s brief cameo as Hans the tailor is a throwaway either. Here is a Holocaust survivor being turned into a sideshow for men who aren’t smart enough to see he’s made them the fools just to survive fascism again.

The supporting cast is fantastic (add Laura Lufési’s Flávia to the mix as her anachronistic inclusion soon puts her centerstage in the epilogue), but this truly is Moura’s show. Does his Marcelo not carry a gun because he doesn’t need one? Or is it because he doesn’t live a life where he ever thought he would? Just as Brazil seeks to slander him as a radical and violent man, the film fantasizes about proving his heroism via genre conventions because it knows a good man caught within a corrupt machine isn’t as sexy as a covert operative on the lam.

Once again, though, Filho never says that’s what he is. He doesn’t outright trick us into believing a lie. He merely draws Moura into situations that can be construed as such without the proper context to see otherwise. It’s a brilliant bit of implicit manipulation that ensures engagement in such a way that we don’t get angry once the strings are revealed. We become impressed. Not only that, but we find ourselves so invested in Marcelo’s safety that we never stop seeing him through that lens. Because speaking truth to power is just as heroic.

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Wagner Moura in THE SECRET AGENT; courtesy of Neon.