The Secret Agent: A Review - Brazil Under the Boot of Fascism
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fascinating and insightful foreign film featuring a superb performance from Wagner Moura, that never fails to compel or captivate as it recounts life under the spell of fascism.
The Secret Agent, written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho, is a Brazilian film that tells the story of a man on the run trying to escape the suffocating authoritarianism of the Brazilian military dictatorship of 1977.
The film, which is currently available to stream on Hulu, was nominated for Best International Feature Film (Brazil), and its star, Wagner Moura, was nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards.
The Secret Agent is a film that may initially confound and confuse those who go into it with a certain expectation. Due to its title, one would maybe expect to see a Brazilian Bond or Bourne film. The Secret Agent is a lot of things, but it is nowhere near that type of movie. Rest assured, there are no tuxedos, no Aston Martins, and no martinis…shaken OR stirred.
The Secret Agent has none of the trappings of a spy story – no great action set pieces, no big chase scenes, but rather just shows the toll that fascism takes on regular people of conscience. Its main thesis appears to me to be how fascism infects every aspect of a society and how it requires a Herculean effort to simply be a decent human being under its iron grip.
The film is a bit unconventional in its structure and narrative, but not so much that it leaves the adventurous and willing viewer lost in its winding wake. The protagonist of the film is Armando (Wagner Moura), who is on the run from nefarious forces and is trying to escape Brazil with his young son.
Armando is welcomed into a dissident network that tries to help him stay safe and start a new life. Everyone in the dissident group is essentially in the same boat, they are all targeted by the fascist government for stepping out of line in one way or another.
The Secret Agent is a good companion piece for another Best International Feature Film nominee from this past year, It Was Just an Accident, which dramatizes life under the fascist theocratic regime of Iran. Both films exquisitely highlight how the corruption of the government seeps into every single interaction at every level of society. People marinated in such corruption become blind to its effects on their own morality and ethics since daily degradation becomes normalized.
The Secret Agent, just like its companion piece - It Was Just an Accident, is expertly directed. Kleber Mendonca Filho deftly directs this film and never lets its sometimes-sprawling narratives weigh down its cinematic effectiveness.
Filho sets a solid and steady pace throughout and creates a somewhat hypnotic viewing experience that compels and fascinates with its various twists and turns – both narratively and stylistically. Filho pays homage to various notable films throughout The Secret Agent, but none so cleverly and creatively as Jaws (a story of a relentless killing machine hiding just beneath the surface waiting to devour) which plays a pivotal role throughout.
He also builds into its structure an unorthodox narrative device (which I will refrain from sharing for spoiler purposes) that creates a distance from the events and along with it a perspective, without ever breaking the flow of the story…no small feat.
As well as Filho directs, the absolute truth regarding The Secret Agent is that the film wouldn’t work without the masterful performance at the heart of it from Wagner Moura.
Moura first came to prominence here in the states playing drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos. He was sensational in that role, eschewing caricature for a deep, grounded portrayal.
I last saw him in the 2024 Alex Garland film, Civil War, in which he played a war reporter/photographer covering a modern-day civil war in the U.S. that was instigated by a Trumpian fascist president. Moura was terrific in that film as well…truth be told he was much better than the material he was given.
As Armando in The Secret Agent, Moura essentially plays three roles, or more accurately he plays the “same” person in three differing stages of their relationship to the fascist government.
Moura is so good in this film it is actually remarkable. It is not a showy performance…he never pushes, he never indicates, he never takes the road of posturing or posing, instead he always feels genuine and grounded. Moura also has the benefit of being one of those actors who is able to simultaneously disappear into a character yet maintain their magnetism and charisma.
One of Wagner’s co-stars in Narcos was Pedro Pascal – who has blown up in recent years and been in everything and anything. The Pascal push to stardom has a distinct whiff of Hollywood manufacturing, which is a foolish endeavor – especially since Wagner Moura is the superior talent in every way imaginable.
One hopes that Wagner Moura gets, like Pascal did, a plethora of opportunities going forward as he is a formidable actor who never fails to elevate any and all material he touches.
The rest of the cast all do excellent work as well, as the film often has the feel of being a voyeuristic endeavor due to the believability of the cast who all seem like real people and not actors trying to portray real people.
Watching The Secret Agent while fascism in various forms flexes its muscles and imposes its will on various societies, cultures and civilizations in real time, is both a chilling and unnerving experience.
The way corruption and brutality are normalized in a fascist society is something that is easy to see in our current moment…when the U.S. is aiding and abetting apartheid Israel with its genocide of Palestinians, and is killing women and children and proudly committing war crimes against Iran at the behest of the same Zio-nazis that through unabashed corruption have captured the ruling elite/Epstein class in the “land of the free”.
But fascism as it is experienced by normal people in their ever day life, often takes on the characteristics of the scenario of a frog in a pot of water that slowly starts to boil. By the time it fascism starts effecting regular, everyday people, it is too late and there is no escape.
The uncomfortable truth that people never want to hear from me is this…it is already too late. The fascist system has been in place for a long time, and it is designed for no other purpose that to sustain itself and feed off of us all. If you pop your head up and declare its invalidity, it will simply take your head clean off and not think twice about it at all…in fact…it wouldn’t think at all as it only acts on out of its self-preservation instincts.
The reality is that as feckless frogs we can’t vote your way out of the boiling water as the political system is part of the problem…both parties exist only to subjugate and exploit you. There is no march you can attend, or sign you can hold up or blog post or tweet you can write that will matter in the least.
The Secret Agent insightfully and masterfully captures the predicament we are all in under the boot of a fascist power that doesn’t just want to control us but to corrupt us…corrupt our bodies, minds and spirits.
The only way we can maintain our humanity and our dignity under such conditions is to be smart, be savvy, keep our corner of the world a bastion for beauty and truth, and to stay alive.
As for The Secret Agent, I highly recommend it…but be forewarned…it is a decidedly arthouse and foreign piece of filmmaking (it is also in Portuguese and English subtitles) that will feel decidedly unorthodox to the uninitiated.
Despite all this, I think it is worth people giving it a try because it is a terrific film and it is so insightful into the current state of affairs here in the U.S.
So go check out The Secret Agent…and keep your eyes open and you’re your mind free, and try to keep yourself and your loved ones safe too, all while the current hurricane of fascism rages all around us.
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