The New York Times listed “The Secret Agent” in its top 10 movies of 2025. It’s got a great title, it was made in Brazil, and it starts with a dead body under some casual cardboard flapping in the wind at a gas station. Flies buzz, dogs come, and Che Guevera-like Wagner Moura, playing affable Armando, drives up in his yellow VW Beetle. Juxtaposition of the dangerously revolting to the happy mundane.
Soon the scene changes and a comic police chief, still in lipstick from the ongoing annual carnival, is called to witness a doctor pull out a relatively unscathed man’s full leg from a dead tiger shark’s belly. It is sent to the morgue, but is soon switched out for a donkey’s leg. Juxtaposition of the bizarre to the unexplained more bizarre.
For the full two-hour and forty-minute run-time, you might be asking yourself, “What’s going on?”
However, “The Secret Agent,” a neo-noir historical political thriller, has already been honored with 28 awards and 20 nominations. At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival it was the festival’s most awarded film, including awards for best actor and director.
The NYT refers to it as a work of art.
I think the leg from the shark, never explained, is the elephant in the room. It is the cryptic Oz behind the curtain, representing what is unknown and therefore scary. It takes on a life of its own, stalking the steamy, decadent underbelly of Brazil in 1977, where and when this story of corruption takes place. The leg terrifies and kicks at naked people having different types of sex openly in the moonlight in a public park.
I think Kleber Mendonça Filho, director/writer, cleverly omits reference to Ernesto Beckmann Geisel, autocratic president of Brazil from 1974-79, like he frustratingly refuses to account for the leg. Beisel was a Brazilian Army officer and politician during the Brazilian military dictatorship. My guess is that Geisel and his autocratic government are represented by that grotesque leg, attracting attention and encouraging stories because people aren’t talking and the media is muzzled. The fear behind the leg, or the government, is the question: Is it coming after you?
Handsome and already a winner of many best actor awards for his understated portrayal of Armando/Marcelo, and later the son, Fernando, Wagner Moura is always gentle. Looking like Che Guevera when he has a full beard, Moura begins and ends the film nonchalantly calm. There are no 007 James Bond shenanigans, secret agent capers or clever sleights, though death scenes do appear.
Despite the NYT fanfare, Rolling Stone’s acclaim and rogerebert.com’s recommendation, I am not a fan. If there’s a metaphor, let its purpose and meaning be universally obvious, not an intellectual guessing game. I spent almost 2 hours and 40 minutes of this too-long film wondering when the action would start, what the purpose of Filho’s film might be, and what that leg from the shark really represented.
Credits
Writer/Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Producers: Emilie Lesclaux and Kleber Mendonça Filho
Cast: Wagner Moura, Carlos Francisco, Tânia Maria, Robério Diógenes, Alice Carvalho, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Hermila Guedes, Isabél Zuaa, and Ufo Kier
Cinematography: Evgenia Alexandrova
Editors: Eduardo Serrano and Matheus Farias
Music: Tomaz Alves Souza and Mateus Alves
Release: Nov. 26, 2025 (limited)
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