The Secret Agent

Filho is really good at setting a scene and immersing you in a time and place, and just as I was with the titular town in Bacurau, I was fascinated by The Secret Agent’s recreation of Recife during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the late 1970s. There are so many details and characters, and I didn’t mind that many of them are superfluous to the plot. I also didn’t mind that the plot really takes its time—80 minutes in, we still only have an inkling of what’s going on. That first half’s self-assured assembly put a spell on me, but it was broken in the back half, when a variety of frivolous tangents are given priority, the central conflict’s murderous animosity is only vaguely justified, and its most consequential moment is shunted off to an afterthought of an epilogue.