Wagner Moura‘s character in “The Secret Agent” isn’t a “violent individual.” However he’s about to make an exception.
“For this man, I’d kill him with a hammer,” Moura says within the first teaser for “The Secret Agent” in a tense interrogation scene.
“The Secret Agent” is the most recent movie from director Kleber Mendonça Filho, the Brazilian auteur who made “Bacurau” and “Aquarius,” and his newest is a trendy interval thriller a couple of man determined to get out of Brazil or die making an attempt. Particularly, it follows Marcelo in 1977 Brazil, who’s a expertise professional who arrives in Recife throughout Carnival hoping to reunite together with his son, solely to understand the town isn’t the non-violent refuge he seeks.
The movie was universally praised out of Cannes and subsequently scooped up by Neon, which is now releasing it theatrically in a restricted capability beginning November 26. That’s in fact after it makes its rounds at Telluride, TIFF, and the New York Movie Pageant.
“The Secret Agent” was one in every of Neon’s many buys after it regarded prefer it might be a contender for the Palme d’Or on the distributor’s quest to maintain its Palme win streak alive. And although the highest prize later went to a different Neon launch, Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Simply an Accident,” “The Secret Agent” took dwelling some critical {hardware}, the uncommon movie to win each Greatest Director and Greatest Actor for Moura.
That efficiency from Moura, whom American audiences will acknowledge for his work on “Narcos” and in Alex Garland’s “Civil Struggle,” is one which IndieWire’s David Ehrlich known as “deceptively recessive” and one which “Mendonça mines for its errant sense of thriller from the film’s opening scene.” It’s not arduous to think about a world the place Moura works his means into the awards dialog, and doubtlessly “The Secret Agent” itself for Greatest Worldwide Movie.
IndieWire in its evaluate additionally in contrast “The Secret Agent” to one thing like “The Grand Budapest Lodge” or “I”m Nonetheless Right here,” films that additionally “hinge on the tragic poignancy of their stolen pasts,” whereas additionally enjoying with B-movie tropes.
“The Secret Agent” additionally stars Maria Fernanda Cândido and Gabriel Leone. Try the primary teaser for the movie under: