The Secret Agent (2025)

Fun fact: the hairy leg articles were a real thing.

This was a great watch. Moura really carried it. The world shoves Pedro Pascal down our throats when this guy deserves more attention.

Tropa de Elite and its sequel also.

what a weird movie, I liked it. Brazilian cinema is just different i guess, a lot of stuff went completely over my head like the significance of the leg stuff was apparently the cops/military used to straight up just murder people so papers would make up crazy stories of how people died to paper over cop killings.

the last 20 minutes of the movie was totally bizarre to me, I don't think American movies could get away with it.

Mostly I really, really just enjoyed vibing in 1970s Brazil. The first hour of the movie has literally no story at all, you just follow a dude around and slowly build up whats going on but lots of confusion. Even still I have no idea what exactly happened, what happened to his wife (I can guess), what was going on with the police chief, on and on. It all felt very foreign which is the point I suppose.

As I mentioned above, the hairy leg articles were real. Because of the censorship that happens in a dictatorship, journalists could not cover police brutality. So to go around the censorship, they invented an absurd boogeyman, the hairy leg. Readers understood what it meant. Here is a Gemini cut and past for you:

Key Aspects of the 1970s Brazilian Dictatorship:

• The Years of Lead & AI-5: Triggered by AI-5 in December 1968, this period brought open repression, torture, and murder of political opponents by agencies like DOI-CODI.
• "Fascist-like" Characteristics: While technically a military-led capitalist dictatorship, the period is described by historians as having "openly fascist" characteristics. These included the brutal crackdown on dissent, complete media censorship, and a culture of fear.
• The "Economic Miracle": The government promoted rapid, foreign-capital-driven economic growth (approx. 11% annually between 1968 and 1973), often called the "Brazilian miracle". This came at the expense of wages and created massive income inequality.
• Ideology & Control: The regime used slogans like "Brazil, Love It or Leave It" (Brazil, amê-lo ou deixe-lo) to promote nationalism, utilizing soccer victories and propaganda to disguise human rights atrocities.
• Repression Apparatus: The National Intelligence Service (SNI) and the DOI-CODI were instrumental in overseeing the imprisonment and torture of over 7,000 citizens, with over 400 people murdered or disappeared.
• "Slow and Gradual Opening" (Abertura): In the late 1970s, under President Geisel, the regime initiated a slow political opening, repealing AI-5 in 1978 and passing an amnesty law in 1979.

The regime was characterized by the "Hardliners" (linha dura) who sought to completely eradicate left-wing influence and social reform movements, often using illegal "clandestine" centers for torture.