“A gripping story that doesn’t need its side quests, no matter how amusing at times, as it thrives when it sticks to its tale of the unsung victims of a brutal time.”

Sharks abound in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s sprawling quasi-political thriller The Secret Agent. Whether we are talking about an actual shark swallowing a man’s leg, with said leg becoming the stuff of legend in the city of Recife (known for its shark-infested waters), or about the fictional shark in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws – a film that young Fernando, son of the protagonist, is dying to see, seemingly a nod to Mendonça Filho’s own childhood as a young lover of film (also try to spot the many classic film posters everywhere, a nice party game). And then there are of course the human sharks that are sniffing out Marcelo’s blood in the water. It’s a fake name, as Marcelo is on the run. To suss out why exactly people are after him, a simple researcher, takes a bit of digging, but it is connected to a corrupt government official who shut down Marcelo’s research department in order to embezzle its funds. Marcelo finds shelter with Dona Sebastiana, an old woman (and quite a character) in Recife who harbors more people in need of a hiding place, for a variety of reasons ranging from their skin color to their sexual proclivities. She also has a two-faced cat, an uncanny sight. Marcelo’s young son Fernando is in Recife too, living with his grandparents on his mother’s side, a mother who suffered a somewhat mysterious death.

But mystery is the name of the game in The Secret Agent, starting with the titular agent. Going in blind, with the publicity stills that were released ahead of its Cannes premiere, might lead people to believe it’s Wagner Moura’s Marcelo, but he’s not the one. Smart money is on Elza, another alias, who arranged a job for Marcelo in the local identification office. This also conveniently gives him ample opportunity to search for information on his mother, the reason for which we learn only late in the game when Mendonça Filho decides to at least clear this mystery up. She records their conversations, which are being transcribed by university students in the present day, trying to clear up the case of a series of murders under the dictatorship of Brazil in the 1970s, an era which the opening credits euphemistically call ‘a time of great mischief’. Marcelo, whose real name is revealed to be Armando, is one of the victims, although we never see the hit that kills him take place.

This current-day timeline feels incongruent with the meat and bones of the story set 40 years prior, and is a way for Mendonça Filho to tie some of the plot together and give Moura an opportunity to show his subtle dramatic chops as the now adult Fernando; playing Fernando’s father gives him very little opportunity for that, as The Secret Agent may be mired in mystery, but is a rather straightforward story of cats and mice, of sharks and their prey. What sets the film apart from your average period thriller is the lived-in atmosphere Mendonça Filho manages to create. It’s not just the exquisite production design, courtesy of Thales Junqueira, or the fact that he references some of the great thriller directors in Hitchcock and De Palma, but his ability to capture a period’s mood and sensibilities, Recife’s oppressive and simmering heat standing in for the oppression by the dictatorship and the dangers of the era. He fully immerses his audience in his film’s environment, which we happen to catch at a time of carnaval; big crowds always create tension.

For a film that is labeled as a thriller, the tension comes more from suggestion than actual incident, at least until late in the film when Marcelo/Armando finds himself finally in a hitman’s crosshairs. Even that he manages to escape without much effort, and the thrills are provided by a menagerie of dirty cops, the aforementioned hitman, and the duo of hardnosed criminals that hired him. Great stretches of the film are spent in conversation, some of them pointless (Udo Kier’s single scene regurgitates a thematic idea that is made elsewhere too), many of them trying to figure out the moves and motives of others. There are moments of great silliness, such as when the human leg that was found in the belly of a washed-up shark starts to get a vengeful life of its own, in wild local stories becoming a celebrity of sorts; it seems to have it in for Recife’s gays, hopping about and kicking them in the face in a local cruising spot. But most of The Secret Agent is deadly serious, except without much death.

One thematic throughline is the divide between the rich and the working classes, a theme that is tied to the background of the father and son, a tie that we only learn about in the film’s coda. Mendonça Filho never delves deep into these issues, merely painting in broad strokes. Fernando’s grandfather runs a local cinema, a nod to the director’s previous film Pictures of Ghosts about the decline of old-school movie theaters in Recife. Even the hopping leg of menace alludes to the fantastical stories we now find on social media. But it’s all surface material, and all it results in is padding the film’s runtime. It’s an attempt to add layers to a film that doesn’t really need them, because the taut thriller material that forms the core of The Secret Agent is engrossing enough. More free-flowing than Walter Salles’ recent hit I’m Still Here, a film that The Secret Agent will lazily be compared to because of its same period setting (I just did), Mendonça Filho’s latest effort is a gripping story that doesn’t need its side quests, no matter how amusing at times, as it thrives when it sticks to its tale of the unsung victims of a brutal time.