Jaws

The Secret Agent

06/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

If this film’s title suggests that we might be about to watch a run of the mill spy movie, don’t be misled. Kiba Mendonça Filho’s historical drama is many things, but straightforward it certainly isn’t. Shown here in a season of 2026’s Oscar-nominated films, it’s a complex, multi-faceted work that pulls in elements from many different genres with absolute authority.

The story opens in 1977 in Recife, Brazil, a country suffering under the curse of a brutal military dictatorship. ‘Marcelo’ (Wagner Moura) pulls in at a remote petrol station looking to fill his empty tank. He’s taken aback when he sees a dead body lying in the dirt under a flimsy covering of cardboard boxes. The attendant casually tells him that the man has been lying there for several days while everyone waits patiently for the cops to come and investigate. When two policeman do drive up, they’re much more interested in trying to extort money from Marcelo (real name Armando), who is returning to his old stamping ground three years after the mysterious death of his wife, Fatima.

Armando is also here to reconnect with his young son, Fernando, who lives with Fatima’s parents in Recife. Fernando is currently obsessed with the film Jaws, which he is desperate to see. When a shark is caught in local waters and a man’s leg is found in the creature’s stomach, the resulting news headlines kick off a whole series of wild rumours and myths. Meanwhile, Armando manages to secure a place in a refuge, run by former anarcho-communist, Dona Sebastiano (Tanya Maria), and there he meets others who have various reasons for wanting to stay under the radar. He finds work at the local identity card office, which gives him an opportunity to search for information about Fatima.

But it transpires that two hit men, Bobbi (Gabriel Leone) and Augusto (Roney Vilella), have been despatched by the man responsible for Fatima’s death, their sole mission to murder Armando…

The strength of this film is that it takes in so many different beats that it constantly challenges my expectations. The seventies setting is brilliantly evoked and there’s a vibrant, Latin American score by Mateus Alves and Tomaz Alves Souza. Maura is utterly compelling in the central role, but he’s only one of a host of fascinating characters that parade exuberantly across the screen in smaller parts. Watch out for the final performance of veteran actor Udo Keir as Hans, a German-Jewish holocaust survivor.

There’s also a engaging subplot set in the present day, where young research student, Flavia (Laura Lufési), attempts to piece together the puzzle to discover what eventually happened to Armando.

With a formidable running time of two hours and forty-five minutes, The Secret Agent is inevitably going to prove divisive, but that Oscar nomination for best international picture is there for good reason and I won’t be at all surprised if it ends up walking away with the trophy.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

Dangerous Animals

11/06/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Shark movies are notoriously hard to pull off. Spielberg pretty much closed the book on them way back in 1975, when Jaws initiated the concept of the summer blockbuster. Since then, there’s not been much to write home about. Deep Blue Sea, The Shallows, The Meg: they’ve all come and gone making… ahem… barely a splash. But writer Nick Lepard and director Sean Byrne are pretty clear about their entry into the genre. The Dangerous Animals of the title are not the sharks themselves, who, let’s face it, are merely acting on instinct, but the men who go after them.

In this film, the supremely toxic Bruce Tucker (a barely recognisable Jai Courtney) operates a business from a lonely quay somewhere on Australia’s Gold Coast. He offers tourists the opportunity to ‘swim with sharks.’ As we discover in a pre-credits sequence, the trips generally end with him feeding his customers to the creatures they’ve come to goggle at, whilst filming the proceedings on his trusty video camera. Luckless Heather (Ella Newton), a student on a gap year, gets to see her new boyfriend, Greg (Liam Greinke), promptly converted into shark food. It’ll be her turn next. Lucky Heather.

But Tucker has already spotted another opportunity and he abducts carefree American camper-van wanderer, Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). He’s unaware that she has just enjoyed a passion-filled one-night-stand with Moses (Josh Houston), who, of course, can’t resist the impulse to go looking for her. Tucker has also underestimated just how resilient Zephyr can be when faced with an ordeal…

I must admit to being torn on this film. Byrne is clearly adept at racking up suspense and in the latter stages of this propulsive drama, he manages it in spades. At several points it’s all I can do not to yell advice at the screen. And Courtney, formally a muscle-bound hunk, jettisons all his dignity to play the over-the-hill villain. He offers considerable nuance in his depiction, even throwing in a lengthy scene where a drunken Tucker flails madly about his cabin, dancing to Crowded House.

Also, unusually for a film like this, Harrison and Houston manage to actually make me care about their respective characters, so I am rooting for them to survive to the closing credits, but…

All these plus points have to be weighed against how deeply unpleasant the overall premise of the story is and, what’s more, how unlikely the events are. If Tucker had only embarked on his enterprise recently, I might be more inclined to…er… swallow the bait, but a scene where he drops his latest video nasty onto a shelf – and we see that there are literally scores of the damned things – just beggars belief. How could he have got away with it for so long? Also unbelievable is the attitude of Dave (Ron Carlton), the old guy who for years has been moored alongside Tucker, and who openly encourages visitors to give the tour a try. For some reason, he has never found the man’s one-way trips in the least bit suspicious. Really?

At the end of the day, your enjoyment of this will very much depend upon your ability to suspend disbelief. I should perhaps warn those of a more sensitive disposition that Dangerous Animals sails very close to crossing the line on its 15 certificate. There’s a lot of chomping going on here – and I’m not talking about the famous Gold Coast all-you-can-eat buffets.

3.5 stars

Philip Caveney