By Sarah A. Spitz
Santa Monica, CA (The Hollywood Times) 1/12/26 – There’s a reason why critics are raving about Kleber Mendonça Filho’s latest film, “The Secret Agent,” starring Wagner Moura. It’s a thriller that pits kindness and surreal humor against brutality and corruption. Its 160-minute length flies by.
And last night at the 2026 Golden Globe Awards, it received Best Non-English Language Film and Best Male Actor awards. Having already won the most awards at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, it’s on the Oscar Short List as Brazil’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film (filmed in Portuguese with subtitles). Thanks to Neon and The American Cinematheque, I was privileged to see it at a classic movie arthouse, The Aero in Santa Monica.
You don’t watch this movie for the landscapes, the vistas, the lighting or costumes. This is a human drama/comedy/tragedy that unfolds with performances that feel completely genuine.
Engaging viewers from the opening scene, the story is set in 1977 during Brazil’s lengthy military dictatorship. Marcelo (Wagner Moura) pulls into a gas station in his beat-up yellow VW; he’s on the run but we won’t find out why till later. He notices the body of a dead thief in the dust, covered in cardboard with feet sticking out.
We quickly discover that the police here are corrupt, useless and thuggish, setting the stage for their actions throughout the film. A pair of cops stops by the gas station, but not to investigate the dead body. For no obvious reason, they search Marcelo’s car for drugs. Then they try to hustle money from him, but he’s just spent the last of it on gas, so he hands over his few remaining cigarettes instead. He handles it all with deadpan aplomb and goes on his way.
The story is told in three parts, and we drop in and out of scenes of Carnival in all its riotous chaos throughout the film. Marcelo makes his way to an address where political fugitives find refuge and assistance in a resistance safe house.
Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria) is a tiny, weathered, smoky voiced 77-year-old woman hosting a number of political refugees, and a caring community builds around her, somewhat mollifying the deep sorrow Marcelo exudes. His wife has died, their young son Fernando is being raised by his in-laws, especially his poignantly portrayed grandfather, Sr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), a projectionist at the local cinema. Fernando is having nightmares about sharks and that’s why grandfather will not take him to see the movie, Jaws.
In part two, we go back and forth in time to uncover why Marcelo is on the run, a research professor booted from his job by a treacherous corporate board member, who will become his nemesis and take revenge. In Marcelo’s current circumstance, he gets a job at the regional identification office, secured for him by a secret member of the resistance.
Marcelo’s mission is to find any document that will prove his mother’s existence, because he never knew her. He is unwillingly befriended by Police Chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes) while working in that office, who’s more gangster than cop. Euclides pals around with assassins and criminals and is entangled with the hitmen hired by the corporate board member to take out Marcelo.
In a series of bizarre and surreal episodes, a human leg is found inside a dead shark, and Euclides knows that because he’s the one who dumped the body it belonged to into the river. After Jaws opens, everyone is maniacally hysterical thanks to tabloid news headlines about the shark and the leg, and shortly, a surreal scene of a free-standing, hopping leg takes place, kicking clandestine and orgiastic lovers of all kinds, gathered in a public park, out in the open, at night.
Marcelo, whose real name is Armando, is discovered by a subcontractor for the hit men, who causes his own violent chaos. When Armando asks Euclides for help, two of his deputies manage to maim the subcontractor but are shot by him and taken away in ambulances.
Marcelo/Armando will meet with Elza (Maria Fernanda Candido), leader of the resistance network in Brazil’s northeast, to try to escape the country, because he’s been put on a federal list preventing his exit. She records him telling his story as she prepares to help get him a new passport.
In the third act of the film, now in modern times, a student, Flavia (Laura Lufési) researches Elza’s resistance network. Listening to these tapes, she decides to seek out adult Fernando (also played by Wagner Moura), now a doctor, and she signs up to donate blood in the hospital where he works, so she can meet him.
They talk, she shares a flash drive with all the taped conversations, and in an irony not lost on anyone, the hospital now occupies the space that formerly housed the cinema, where his grandfather was the projectionist. A perfect twist to end a not-to-be-missed movie. Stay tuned for the Academy Awards for this one.
It opens today at Laemmle’s Town Center 5 in Encino and is in wide release throughout LA.
