The Secret Agent: Superlative in all respects

The Secret Agent (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong, bloody violence, sexual content, profanity and nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.15.26

Brazilian filmmakers clearly are drawn to unsettling dramas set during the 21-year military dictatorship that ousted the democratically elected president in 1964, both as a means of addressing their country’s recent past, and as an uncomfortable parallel to current events … particularly in the United States.

 

Armando (Wagner Moura, center, smiling) finds a safe and comfortable haven in a
group home, among fellow refugees.

Writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s new film arrives hot on the heels of Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, which hit our shores early last year. But while that film is heavily autobiographical, based on Salles’ mother’s memoirs, Mendonça Filho’s compelling drama is a fictitious, Hollywood-style production very much in the mold of 1970s American “paranoia thrillers” such as The Parallax View and The Conversation.

Indeed, Mendonça Filho admits to having emulated the style of directors such as Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.

 

This cleverly crafted narrative unfolds in tantalizing, teasing dollops. It’s a grimly melancholy study of how ordinary people become complicit in an ongoing atmosphere of corruption, by gradually accepting it as business as usual.

 

The year is 1977; we meet Armando Solimões (a note-perfect Wagner Moura) as he travels during the sweltering carnival holiday, driving a Volkswagen Beetle (which were ubiquitous in Brazil, during that decade). A stop for gas exposes both the jaw-dropping disregard of a recent violent encounter, and the casual corruption of a passing police officer who subjects Armando to an unnecessary “interview.”

 

He handles that quasi-interrogation with cool, mildly amused detachment, aware that this is a routine “game” that must be played. But, as we soon learn, Armando’s sang froid is a carefully crafted pose, because he’s a man on the run. He’s heading to the northeastern Atlantic Coast city of Recife, where his in-laws have been caring for his young son, Fernando (Enzo Nunes).

 

Armando’s wife, Fátima, is out of the picture. We don’t find out why, or how, for awhile.

 

He has been directed to a “safe house” run by Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), a venerable former anarcho-communist who has given similar refuge to a gaggle of other political dissidents.

 

Maria is terrific in this role, giving Dona Sebastiana an adorable blend of feisty resilience, shrewd character judgement and sharp-eyed intelligence; this woman has seen it all, and survives to tell countless tales. Maria definitely should have garnered a Supporting Actress Oscar nod; she’s leagues above at least two of the actresses who did make the cut.

Civil War: Riveting and upsetting

Civil War (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violent content, bloody and disturbing images, gore and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.12.24

Alex Garland makes thoughtful, engaging and extremely disturbing films.

 

He clearly has a fondness for cautionary, intelligent What If? parables, hearkening back to his unsettling 2010 big screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Garland then made his directing debut with 2014’s Ex Machina, a brilliant study of the nature of humanity, and the dangers of creating a synthetic being that learns the seductive allure of free will.

 

Jessie (Cailee Spaeny, left) and Lee (Kirsten Dunst), taking advantage of a welcome
respite in a safe zone, get to know each other better ... and discover that they're
more alike than the generational gap might suggest.

And now we have Civil War, a hard-hitting, seriously distressing tour-de-force ripped from today’s headlines, which supplies a distressingly credible view of what could happen in this country, given the path we’ve currently chosen. 

But — and this is Garland’s master stroke — this dystopian, near-future dis-United States is mere backdrop to his story’s actual focus: on the insanely brave photojournalists who serve as war correspondents, risking their lives while embedding themselves in “hot zones,” in order to get The Perfect Shot that’ll bring meaning to the chaos of conflict.

 

The strong cast is headed by Kirsten Dunst as Lee, a seasoned war photographer who has seen it all. As we meet her, sitting in an abandoned parking lot amid the echoes of gunfire, she reflects on her life in dismay.

 

“Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home: Don’t do this,” she says to Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), an older colleague.

 

“But here we are.”

 

A preceding prologue found the U.S. President (Nick Offerman) rehearsing potential words and cadence, before delivering a stirring, “We’re on the verge of victory” speech. Garland doesn’t hammer the point, but subsequent details reveal that this is a Trumpian martinet who anointed himself to a third term, disbanded the FBI, regards journalists as traitors to be executed, and has ordered U.S. military forces to fire upon American citizens.

 

We’ve no idea what tipping point led to this war; Garland dumps us into the middle of what has become an extended catastrophe. In another canny stroke of scripting genius, the federal government is being opposed by an alliance of “Western Forces” states led collaboratively by California and Texas. Their goal: to remove the President from office, by whatever means necessary.

 

There is no “red” or “blue,” merely those determined to cling to power no matter what, those who righteously believe in restoring justice and sanity ... and thousands of scattered individuals eager to exploit this state of chaos, in order to indulge their personal, conspiracy-laced vendettas.

 

The latter faction is, without question, the most dangerous.

 

Elysium: District 10?

Elysium (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, gore and strong bloody violence
By Derrick Bang

Based on the evidence thus far, filmmaker Neill Blomkamp has only one story to tell.

Elysium feels much like his previous film, District 9, writ larger: another saga of oppressed “aliens” seeking a way to rebel against their cruel and privileged overlords. The setting and opposing teams have changed slightly, and Blomkamp clearly has a bigger budget this time at bat, but the key plot points are essentially the same; even the hardware and weaponry look familiar.

His impulsive plans having failed yet again, Max (Matt Damon) finds himself trapped on
a medical table, while the coldly arrogant Delacourt (Jodie Foster) orders some
purloined computer data stripped from his brain ... not at all bothered by the fact that
this process will kill him.

That said, political oppression has been a big-screen sci-fi staple going all the way back to 1927’s Metropolis, and it often produces great drama. So we can forgive Blomkamp the familiarity ... this time. (He would be wise, however, to move in a different direction henceforth.)

The South African-born filmmaker has a solid eye and ear for social strife — no surprise, given his homeland — which contributed, in great part, to the narrative power of District 9. Now embraced by the seductive lure of Hollywood, Blomkamp has turned his disapproving eye on the United States, and its dysfunctional immigration policy; the results aren’t likely to be embraced by red staters.

The year is 2154, and the entire Earth has become an environmental wasteland, ruined by industrial excess, land mismanagement, resource depletion and various other unchecked global horrors we currently practice, with no eye toward future consequences. Every country, in turn, has become part of a planetwide ghetto, the 99 percent left to scrabble and squabble among themselves.

But not entirely. Movement and behavior are monitored by android peacekeepers that employ computer-chip tracking to maintain a veritable police state bereft of basic human decency. And humor: Just as it isn’t smart, in our here and now, to crack wise when stopped by a traffic cop, it is sheer folly to act smug with one of these gun-toting “law officers.”

George Orwell’s influence weighs heavily, and his vision has come to pass: Big Brother really is watching, and doing so from a massive orbiting space station dubbed Elysium, where the very wealthy have fled in order to enjoy a life of pleasure and privilege among lush gardens and sparkling architecture. Automated med-bays can repair, reconstruct or eradicate anything, from broken bones to cancer.

Blomkamp knows his science-fiction, Elysium being a verdant cross between the domed forests of 1972’s Silent Running, and the technological wonders of Larry Niven’s Ringworld novels.