The only place Wagner Moura is safe is in this great review.

Don’t let the title “The Secret Agent” fool you. This isn’t a spy movie. It’s a Brazilian drama about a man who is in danger and hides out in his hometown, only to find out he might not be safe there, either. We’ll get to all that in a second.

I entered my critic’s screening of “The Secret Agent” not really knowing what to expect. All I knew that it was an international film and staring Wagner Moura. And as I began to watch it, I see the screen with bright colors (photographed by Evgenia Alexandrova) and Moura’s character Armando arriving at a gas station where he witnesses a dead body under a flat cardboard box and the police checking his license and fire extinguisher. And it all takes place in the 1970s after Carnival and during the political turmoil of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

I didn’t really expect “The Secret Agent” to also work as a visual wonder with echos from Jean Pierre Jeunet or Yorgos Lanthimos. For example, there is a cat with two faces like some kind of conjoined twins on one body, and there is also a leg pulled out of a tiger shark’s body and hopping around at night. What is that leg’s purpose? I think it might be a homophobic. But whatever the reason, it might remind some people about their first reactions toward that unexpectedly delightful frog scene in “Magnolia.”

Let’s also get to the father-son side that isn’t irritating as it probably would have been in other movies. Armando’s hometown is in Recife, and given his position as a teacher turned fugitive from the political system, his son Fernando (Enzo Nunes) lives with his father-in-law St. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), who is also a film projectionist at the local theater. Instead of dealing with the usual custody battle, the boy has nightmares from the “Jaws” poster, draws shark pictures, and believes that seeing the actual movie at his grandfather’s workplace will solve all his problems. His dad still says “no” for the sake of his boy’s sanity.

Meanwhile, Armando seeks refugee courtesy of Dona Sebasitana (Tânia Maria), and works at the city’s social registration archives under the name Marcelo. He seizes the opportunity to try to find documents of his late mother. Two hitmen named Bobbi (Gabriel Leone) and Augusto (Roney Villela) have been hired to find and kill Armando with no luck, so they turn to the gunman Vilmar (Kaiony Venâncio) for assistance. And at this point in the country’s turmoil, the main character makes contact with a political resistance movement leader named Elza (Maria Fernanda Candido), who suggests he flees the country soon.

“The Secret Agent” runs for 2 hours and 30 minutes, and there’s a lot to unpack here. Some of which I can’t really comprehend, and most of which try different ideas to express political issues at the time and a strong sense of daring. We even get a modern day subplot regarding a student (Laura Lufési) looking into the main character’s story, and a quickie with the recently departed Udo Kier as a Holocaust survivor who is accused of being a Nazi fugitive. Written and directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho (“Aquarius,” “Bacurau”), it shows that in both international and American films (remember last year’s “Civil War”), Moura has a strong notion that truly makes him a character actor. And the final 15-20 minutes of the film quite unexpected.

I watch international films as much as American films to find something original and daring. Even with the time length, I was patient enough to see what was happening and what danger Armando is in. We get some chases, father-son moments, interviews, and guns, but none of this is cliched. Underneath its bright colors, is a serious, sometimes weird, mostly political, and wildly entertaining movie.

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