Oscar Nominee Film Review: THE SECRET AGENT

One of the joys of making a point out of seeing ALL of the films nominated for the Major Oscars every year is that there is a gem of film (usually in a foreign language) that the BankofMarquis would never have gotten around to viewing, but is rewarded with a rich, filmgoing experience.

Films like I’M STILL HERE, DRIVE MY CAR, ANATOMY OF A FALL and the ZONE OF INTEREST were powerful character dramas that deserved to be seen by as large of audience as it can get.

The Brazilian film THE SECRET AGENT does NOT fall into this category.

Overly long at 2 hours and 45 minutes, THE SECRET AGENT tells the story of a man trying to escape a dictatorship government in Brazil in 1977. As Written and Directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho, this film has scenes that go on too long, characters that are interesting but go no where and a myriad of plots and subplots that abruptly end.

All of this would be forgiven if they would all coalesce in the end, but most of those threads are just abandoned.

Fortunately, Filho has Wagner Moura (last year’s underrated CIVIL WAR) as the central character who is in about 90% of the scenes. His character, Marcelo is grounded, real, steadfast, earnest and focused on his goal of laying low until he can get out of Brazil. Moura is Oscar Nominated for Best Actor and while it is a very fine performance, Oscar-caliber it is not.

And the same goes for the rest of this leisurely paced film. It is up for a total of 4 Oscars (including Best Picture) and it won’t win any of these. What this film could have used is a good, strong editor, trimming this down to a taught 2 hours, driving out unnecessary characters and subplots.

What Filho and team will have to be happy with is that with these nominations, folks like me are putting eyeballs on a film that, ordinarily, would not be on the radar.

Letter Grade: B

7 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank (ofMarquis)