‘The Secret Agent’ Reportedly Lands Streaming Date

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The critically acclaimed Brazilian thriller, The Secret Agent, will be available to stream starting Tuesday, January 27th. Directed and written by Kleber Mendonça Filho, the 2025 film has received three Golden Globe nominations – Best Drama, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Actor for Wagner Moura – and will be released worldwide on the streaming platform NEON, just two months after its initial release in theaters.

I just saw a gripping thriller set in Brazil, 1977, and it really stayed with me. It centers around Marcelo, played brilliantly by Wagner Moura, a former professor who suddenly finds himself a target of the ruling dictatorship and some seriously dangerous mercenaries. The story jumps around a bit, keeping you on edge as Marcelo desperately tries to escape the country with his son. He’s forced to seek refuge with a hidden underground resistance. It’s also a bittersweet experience seeing the late, great Udo Kier in one of his final roles. The supporting cast, including Maria Fernanda Candido and Gabriel Leone, all deliver strong performances, really bringing this tense and politically charged story to life.

The Golden Globes awards show will be held tomorrow, Sunday, January 11th, at the Beverly Hilton. Nikki Glaser will host for the second year, and you can watch the ceremony on CBS and Paramount+.

What Did Critics Make of ‘The Secret Agent’?


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I really enjoyed The Secret Agent, and in my review for MovieWeb, I highlighted how brilliantly the director walked the line between serious, thought-provoking ideas and genuinely funny, quirky humor. It’s a combination that shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does on screen.

The film portrays a Brazil overflowing with both political refugees desperately trying to escape and powerful politicians openly involved in corruption and violence. While the story revolves around the exchange of information and resistance to oppression, director Mendonça’s most compelling decision is to weave between the past – where the story unfolds – and the present, where characters listen to recordings of that very story. This unconventional structure feels jarring at first, but slowly reveals itself as a clever way to frame the narrative and offer a particular perspective; the film doesn’t necessarily present facts, but rather the remembered experiences of one individual.

Rather than a traditional spy story, The Secret Agent focuses on the draining experience of simply staying alive. The film isn’t entirely serious, though; Mendonça often uses absurdity and humor in both the plot and how it’s presented. Like his previous film, Bacurau (which drew inspiration from John Carpenter), this one shows his love for genre cinema – particularly through stylistic choices, such as recreating scenes from Jaws while the movie is shown within the film itself, and through certain plot developments.

Barquin praised the film as a thoughtful and relevant commentary on society, saying we need more movies like it. He also highlighted its willingness to honestly examine difficult and complex events from the past. Currently, The Secret Agent has a remarkably high 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 151 critic reviews.

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2026-01-10 23:07