Secret Agent: The Grotesque is Gratuitous and the Sex Mindless... But This Movie Does End Strong

March 2026

 

So Wagner Moura was nominated for Best Actor for Secret Agent?

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For what...

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Best Facial Hair?

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Or maybe for looking worried for two hours and forty minutes?

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Because I have to admit I'm at a loss to explain this nomination...

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Since Moura really wasn't required to do much in this film...

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So I'm starting to suspect it was because he is good looking...

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But then again...

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The Best Picture nomination for this film...

Also made little sense...

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Because Secret Agent is a pretty generic film about a dysfunctional Latin American country...

Of which there has never been a shortage...

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But I did learn a few things about Brazil watching Secret Agent...

 

Brazilians... of every sexual orientation...

Like to have sex in public places...

 

A lot...

 

Everyone wears sandals... all the time...

Most of the men wear shorts... and no shirts...

Even if they have bellies that rival the old John Goodman...

 

And in 1977 they mostly drove Volkswagen Beetles...

 

And they take Carnival... very seriously...

And violence casually...

 

And I get why American farmers are worried about competition from Brazil...

Because the fields in this film were certainly full of lush-looking crops...

 

Now this movie is about a man named Armando...

Who is trying to stay alive...

And escape the hit men sent to kill him...

 

And... this is important...

 

These hit men were not sent by the Brazilian government...

 

So it’s unclear why Armando is hiding out with ”refugees”...

 

Who ...

 

Are hiding out from the government...

 

But... no matter...

 

We can’t have a movie about a Latin American country ...

In which the government is not repressive...

And anarcho-communists the sympathetic heroes...

 

But most of what we see in Secret Agent...

 

Is an incredibly inept bureaucracy...

Where no one works...

The police are thugs ...

 

And there is rampant corruption... at all levels of society...

 

But it does seem strange that the Resistance...

Who are protecting Armando...

 

Would choose to have him work in a government office...

 

Because that would not be where I would want to be every day...

If I was in hiding...

 

Now Secret Agent does tap into the grotesque a fair amount...

 

So I suspect that the director ... Kleber Mendonca Filho

Who started out as movie critic...

Wants to be the Brazilian Guillermo del Toro...

 

But these scenes feel gratuitous...

 

And I suspect are in the film ...

 

Much like the sex....

 

To keep us from dozing off...

Because until the end...

There is very little in this movie to hold one’s attention...

 

Because the story is fairly formulaic for a film about Latin American politics...

And so has few surprises...

 

Now it takes a while...

 

But we find out that Armando...

Is not some political hero...

Who has taken on the military dictatorship in Brazil...

 

In fact, he’s a professor ...

With perhaps a bit too robust sense of entitlement...

 

Who is “shocked” that someone might question what he is doing ...

With all that tax money ...

The people of Brazil ...

Are paying to fund his research...

 

But Armando gets huffy when it is pointed out to him that maybe he should care about not wasting this money...

By a sleazy industrialist...

 

Who, of course, has an agenda...

 

And then Armando’s wife goes off the rails at dinner...

And attacks the industrialist...

 

Which maybe wasn’t a great idea...

Because the industrialist is Italian...

And a mafioso...

 

Who has now been disrespected...

And so puts out a hit on Armando...

 

So even though Kleber Mendonca Filho intended for Armando to be a sympathetic character...

And for most of the film he is...

It was a tiff in a restaurant between two men who were disrespecting each other...

Which was then accelerated by Armando’s fiery wife...

 

That set in motion...

The events that put his life in danger...

 

But at the end of the movie...

 

Secret Agent is a captivating thriller....

 

Because the story unfolds well...

 

And its ending will have you sitting on the edge of your seat...

 

As well as unsure of who Armando really needs to be worried about...

 

Because everyone is connected in one way or another in this movie...

 

And very few are innocent...

 

And the finale will surprise you...

 

Because the director did not go for the easy... and predictable ending...

 

So although Secret Agent finishes strong....

 

It is just another movie about Latin American political dysfunction...

In which the Left are always the good guys...

 

And how many of those have we already seen?

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So next time...

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How about a film about "Big Alex"...

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The Brazilian judge who put ex-president Bolsonaro in jail for 27 years...

 

And became a meme...

After he was shown tearing up marijuana plants with his bare hands during a police raid...

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For the camera, of course...

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Now that would be the kind of topic for a film

 

We haven't seen before...

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