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The Secret Agent is one of the very best films playing at this year’s New York Film Festival. It has rightly won a boatload of awards and it probably will win another boatload as well.
The plot of the film has man coming to the city of Recife in
Brazil in order to try to find a way out of the country. He needs to remain
under the radar before he gets out of Dodge with his son.
Beginning with an opening scene that came from real life
where the character Wagner Moura plays is shaken down by a cop who wants money not to arrest
him, the film pulls us a long to its heart rending conclusion. This is a film full of great places and
characters. My friend Anthony, who hails from the same area of
Brazil said, it’s all real, versions of some of the events happened to him. For Anthony this was a trip home without getting on
a plane. For me this was just a hell of a ride. It’s a trip to the dark side as
our hero tries to remain safe. It’s a film whose plot unfold like the layers of
an onion. Details are revealed as needed in perfectly timed reveals. It was a fact
that I was readily aware of because a couple of other films at NYFF never told
us what we needed to know and we felt adrift. Here we are pulled along so
perfectly that by the time the film ends we can’t believe it’s been almost 3
hours in the dark.
I would argue that the film is near perfect. The only misstep
is that the film doesn’t completely explain how the story in 1977 ties into the
modern section of the film since the film shows us a great deal that isn’t on
audio tapes. How does the young woman know some of what happened? Related to
that I adore how the film ends and how it wraps everything up. It is so damn
perfect and real, telling us everything we need to know without showing us too
much.
This is a staggering achievement and hands down director Kleber Mendonca Filho's best film.
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