Armando Solimões, the mournful-eyed central character played by Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent , isn’t a government operative, despite the title of the film. He also isn’t undercover, exactly, though for most of the first half of the film, the terrific latest from Kleber Mendonça Filho, he goes by the alias of Marcelo Alves. When Armando first rolls up to a gas station on the outskirts of his hometown of Recife in his yolk-yellow Volkswagen Beetle with days-on-the-road scruff, he has an air of watchfulness that suggests there’s more to him than initially meets the eye. Then again, it’s 1977 in Brazil, and a degree of caution is warranted from everyone, given that the country is over a decade into a military dictatorship whose effects have seeped into many aspects of day-to-day life. We

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