The Secret Agent (2025)

The Secret Agent wanders off on so many detours that the actual thriller vanishes for long stretches, and at 161 minutes you will notice. It isn’t always coherent, and stretches are calmer than a story about hitmen should be. Then the detours turn out to be the best part. Kleber Mendonça Filho sets it in Recife in 1977, under the military dictatorship, during Carnival, and Wagner Moura plays Armando, a former researcher hiding under a fake name while men in São Paulo arrange to have him killed. Moura is riveting, a gentle, worried man holding everything in. A smug police chief who insists on being his friend is the creepiest presence in the movie. Meanwhile, a tabloid legend about a hairy leg loose in a city park grips the town, and it’s hilarious and pointed. It holds a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. An 8.7 because it’s bold, strange and alive, even when it drifts. $508 says your next walk through a park includes at least one nervous glance at the bushes for a hairy leg.

What works: Wagner Moura is magnetic, and the film’s strange detours, from the hairy leg legend to the safe house, are where it comes most alive.

What doesn’t: At 161 minutes it isn’t always coherent, and long stretches feel calmer than a story about hitmen should.

Who it’s for: Patient viewers who love 1970s thrillers and don’t mind a movie that takes the scenic route.