The Secret Agent 4K 2025

Four Oscar nominations, including the top honor. Wins in several categories at Cannes and the Golden Globes. A brief description that tells us we’re heading to 1970s Brazil, where a scientist on the run hopes to find his mother’s documents, visits his son—who, for some reason, is living with his grandparents—and faces the harsh reality of life as a “man on the run.”

What makes the film great is its visuals. We are shown 1970s Brazil with all its military dictatorship, corrupt and criminalized police, hired killers, sharks with human legs found in their stomachs, endless heat, and cigarette smoke. The streets, courtyards, rooms, and old fans wonderfully immerse you in another country and era.

The cast is very well chosen. The actors are distinctive, their characters are memorable, they’re interesting to watch, and it’s interesting to see them. However, I just can’t find anything truly outstanding in the performances of this film’s actors. It’s a good performance, and, I’ll say it again, they look very distinctive, but I honestly don’t understand the nominations for best acting.

Of course, there is something grand about this film. I’m sure a lot is hidden in the cultural context—people who didn’t live in that time and in that country probably won’t understand much. But is it interesting to watch this film, which runs for over two hours? Not really, to be honest.

At the beginning, we’re thrown a barrage of characters, facts, and locations in a practically chaotic way, without much explanation or context, which makes the connections between different events seem completely unclear. And that’s annoying. Later, of course, the film more or less settles into a smooth and understandable narrative, but by the end of the second hour, you can really start to get bored. Toward the end, we get a bit of a very good, tense atmosphere, but it doesn’t really save the film. Still, for the most part, after watching it, you remember precisely that “jolt.”

Yes, the film tells a terribly heavy story (which, by the way, leaves the viewer with a huge number of questions after watching) about a terrifying regime and those who fell out of favor. Yes, it sometimes jumps on the bandwagon of “philosophical reflections” about how the memory of our ancestors lives on as long as we do and as long as we remember them. But, for me personally, this is a one-time-watch movie, which is undoubtedly very important and probably necessary for many, but at the same time, it feels as though it wasn’t fully thought through.