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 dissenter

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