You can almost smell the sweat in “The Secret Agent,” a stylish, slow burn thriller about radicals and mercenaries in 1977 Brazil. Filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho begins his film with the note that it was “a time of mischief.”

It’s a sly kind of promise of what’s to come over the next 2 ½ hours, where audiences will meet hit men, zombie legs, corrupt cops, a two-headed cat and a quiet man named Marcelo (Wagner Moura) who is running away from something — and into something possibly more dangerous. The film opens in limited release Wednesday.

Death is everywhere in Recife, where life has taken on a kind of surrealism as raucous Carnival celebrations drag on and the body count gets larger. Academics and journalists are being persecuted under the military dictatorship, and dissenters seem to

See Full Page