Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. Hoping to reunite with his son, he travels to Recife during Carnival but soon realizes that the city is not the safe haven he was expecting.
The Secret Agent (2025) is a Brazilian political thriller set during the military dictatorship era, following a man on the run through Carnival-era Recife. The cinematography stands out as a genuine strength, capturing the atmosphere of 1970s Recife with period-appropriate texture and the vivid contrast between Carnival festivities and the paranoia of dictatorship. The plot is competent and engaging within the political thriller genre, though it follows fairly familiar fugitive-on-the-run conventions. Acting appears solid but unremarkable. The film's setting and political context give it some regional distinctiveness, but the narrative mechanics are recognizable enough to keep Novelty from rising above average. The ending resolves the tension adequately without delivering anything particularly memorable or subversive.