161 min | R | November 26, 2025 | Neon
Brazil’s military dictatorship gets the thriller treatment it deserves. The parallels to the present are not subtle. They don’t need to be.
I wish desperately that the US had nothing to learn from a film about a brutal and dehumanizing illegitimate junta that gripped Brazil for two decades. But here we are. The Secret Agent has increased relevance as a cautionary look at how society and the rules and standards that bind us in politeness can unite us in fear when conditions change. Kleber Mendonca Filho understands this in his bones. He made Bacurau. He knows what happens when power stops pretending.
Set in stunning Recife, the film is gorgeous in ways that make the political horror land harder. Beautiful places under ugly regimes. The contrast is the point. Mendonca Filho shoots his city with love and then fills it with dread. Wagner Moura navigates the tension with a performance that never overplays the danger or the humanity. He lives in the gray space where survival requires compromise and compromise requires silence.
The parabolic parallelization of Jaws is supremely well crafted. The threat is out there. Everyone knows it. The people in charge insist everything is fine. The machinery of denial grinds forward while the body count rises. Mendonca Filho takes Spielberg’s structure and repurposes it for state terror. It works because the metaphor is earned, not forced. The shark is the regime. The beach is civil society. And the mayor telling everyone to get back in the water is every official who ever asked citizens to stay calm while their rights disappeared.