"It is digressive and droll and yet in its final act escalates stunningly from lugubrious mystery to cold-sweat tension and violence. When the best picture Oscar is announced, my heart would sing to see its husband-and-wife producers Emilie Lesclaux and Kleber Mendonca Filho go on stage to accept it for their drama-thriller The Secret Agent."
"It is like Antonioni's The Passenger mixed with Leone and Peckinpah and a pulp shocker by Elmore Leonard. Yet it has a kind of novelistic, episodic quality a cool, discursive self-awareness. You might call it a little miracle, although at near-epic length (2hrs 40mins), it's actually a very big miracle."
"The setting is the Brazilian city of Recife during the 70s military dictatorship. Wagner Moura plays Armando, a widower and professor of engineering who, though not really any sort of dissident or leftist, is now an enemy of the state. He goes on the run in his yellow VW Beetle from Ghirotti, a businessman with government connections, racist attitudes, misogynist tendencies and mafioso vengefulness."
The Secret Agent is a sophisticated Brazilian film directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho set in Recife during the 1970s military dictatorship. Wagner Moura plays Armando, a widower and engineering professor who becomes an enemy of the state after confronting a corrupt businessman named Ghirotti over university department closure and insults to his late wife. Armando flees in a yellow VW Beetle, pursued by Ghirotti's vengeful connections. The film combines stylistic influences from Antonioni, Leone, Peckinpah, and pulp fiction, featuring a digressive, episodic narrative structure. Despite its nearly three-hour length, the film escalates from mysterious tension to violent confrontation, exploring themes of love, fatherhood, and coming to terms with the past through a novelistic, self-aware approach.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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