India, Nov. 14 -- Some films like to get to the chase quite upfront. There is not a scene wasted. There is a storytelling intrigue that dictates the shots forward. Then there comes a film like The Secret Agent, from the mind of Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho. A film that begins with the breadcrumbs of intrigue-both political and personal -and then slows down. Sharp yet elusive, it is a story that is in no hurry to confront what lies ahead. We expect to see it one way or the other. Yet, this sense of inevitability gives the film a killer unpredictability.

We land in Brazil in 1977, introduced as "a time of great mischief." A man's corpse is rotting away near a rural gas station where Wagner Moura's Armando pulls in his bright y...