Panic World - BONUS: The Oscars snubbed "The Secret Agent"

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Ryan & Grant convene their movie club to discuss The Secret Agent, one of — or maybe the — best film(s) of 2025, and what it says about where we're at as a society. Want to hear the rest of this conversation? And get even more extra content, like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our exclusive Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

recording no. All right. This is going to be a long day for me who is dumb and speaks one language poorly and that's English. Unlike you, I speak many languages extremely poorly. But let me start with this. Would you rather be kicked in a park by an amputated leg or would you rather be pulling an amputated leg out of a shark's stomach?

Do you know what the amputated leg in the park scene is about? I have some ideas. I have thoughts. Okay, well, it's a funny one for you to choose to start with. I was not totally... I'm just thinking of his value here, buddy. I was not totally aware of the context there, but I found a Brazilian sort of talking about it. I guess during the detatorship, a lot of newspapers would use, like, sightings of Brazilian folk monsters and such as a way to warn a

especially the queer community that the military had come in and kick the shit out of everyone somewhere. Obviously, Ryan, I did not know that. And that's rude of you. But I'm just asking face value. So that's what that scene is. That scene is the newspaper. creepy pasta way. Would you rather have a magical amputated leg kick you? Or would you rather be smelling the inside of a shark as you have to pull out an amputated leg? I'm also excited because my favorite word in Portuguese is the word for shark, which is too barrao. All right. You're not going to answer.

I'm Grant Irving. This is Panic Road, a show about how the internet warps our minds are cultural and revengeally reality. And today, we are talking about the 2025 movie Secret Agent. Joining me, a man who has nightmares about jaws every single night. Ryan Broderick, welcome to your podcast. I've never had any nightmares about jaws. I think sharks are cool.

You've never had any name. Do you, have you ever had any animal related nightmare? Never. Never, ever. It literally did nothing. Jaws did nothing for me. I mean, it's a cool movie, but you as a kid, I was like, I feel like it'd be pretty easy not to get eaten by a shark. Moving right along. You wanted to talk about this movie. I just finished watching it. I find it very interesting that of all of the movies right now that people have been requesting for us to talk about. This is the one that you said, yes, let's like, we need to talk about this now. Tell me why you is such a strong. strong reaction before we get into it. So I thought it was a very panic world movie in ways that surprised me. I mean, we've been talking about sort of like the American weirdness of cinema over the last, you know, year and a half or so.

And I think Secret Agent or a Jean Chies Secreto, starring Wagner Mora, is actually doing a lot of similar things to something like Eddington, but doing them in a far better, more interesting way. Also, Secret Agent has very quickly for me become like my top pick for Best Picture this year. Like, I think it's, I think it's just an incredible film. And I think it's an especially important movie for Americans to watch right now who may not sort of understand what a dictatorship feels like and looks like in the contours of sort of how a regime functions. And so I really wanted to talk about it. I think it's just an amazing movie. It takes place during Brazil's military dictatorship, which lasted for 21 years.

I have met people who grew up in it, lived it. I know reporters who managed to survive it. And I was, I don't know, I just sort of blown away by how the movie depicts this societal level hierarchy of violence and corruption that everyone kind of knows, encompasses the regime and the way sort of that works with the media, as you said, in the sort of severed leg segment, which we can talk more about, the paranoia, the isolation. And then ultimately, you know, we can go, we can go beat by beat in a second. But the ending, which we can talk more about, shows you that once you've escaped something like that, it leaves its fingerprints in your society and in your own personal history and your own memories. I just think it's an extraordinary

movie and and one that like makes a lot of things literal that we abstractly talk about on this show. Yeah, yeah. As is my nature. I'm going to give a little feelings corner before we move through it. Funnily, I knew very little about it and it's in theaters right now along with the movie Surratt. Have you seen Surratt? I have not, but I was surprised seeing I'm going through all the Oscar nom movies, the major ones right now. And I was shocked by how sentimental value actually covers a lot of similar territory where it has an entire subplot about Nazi occupation of Norway.

I will add it to the list. But it was like peak seasonal depression end of February. And we were like, let's go to a movie. And like the description of Surat is just a man looks for his daughter at a rave. And secret agent was like about espionage in a war torn country. and I said, I can't handle a movie about politics right now. I'm looking to escape. And then Surat was the most intense and jarring version I've ever seen

depicted of what it's like to live while a war is going around to. It's an incredible, difficult movie. So I kind of came into Secret Agent with like this like, I know I'm in for something. And it's a kind of beautifully much gentler, like straightforward, movie. Yeah. Then today, I finished it last night. And then today, as I was thinking about it, I kind of got hit by how stunning and how

emotional it was. But it's like all these other movies we've been talking about are so intense to try to capture everything. And this movie takes its time. And it and it has this like, it does the, it does the paranoia in this like slow, quiet way that seems almost easier to swallow in the moment to then let it linger in your brain where every other movie we've talked about we've been like they kind of force you to shut down or resort to slapstick and it yeah it's it's it's it is a very different texture to be

able to process uh i would say i would say of the sort of major films of the last year and change it is one that i think is so dense but also so pleasant edington is a deeply unpleasant film. It's probably the closest American film to something like Secret Agent that has come out in the last year. But Secret Agent is telling a, I mean, I don't know, it's like coughing baby nuclear bomb. Like it's just a different, it's a different level of film. And I do want to go beat by beat, actually. I don't like doing that normally. But let's start with the opening because I think the opening is just like, it's funny. I was watching it with my girlfriend. And I remember we get to like, I paused to go the bathroom, and it was an hour and a half into the nearly three-hour running time.

And I was like, I can't wait to find out what this movie is about. That wasn't a bad thing. Like, I just sort of enjoyed it. But it opens with Wagner Mora's character. He's driving basically along the coast of what is called, like the Brazilian Caribbean, Pernambuco. I drove that coastline actually years ago. it's gorgeous. Like it's actually gorgeous.

He's driving to Recifi, which is the capital of Pernambuco, a beautiful stretch of what is called the Brazilian Caribbean sometimes. And it's carnival. He needs gas. And he ends up at a gas station where a man has been shot to death and is rotting out in the sun and being eaten by wild dogs. Covered in like two sheets of newspaper held out by Iraq. And like nobody really cares.

The local law enforcement doesn't care. They do eventually show up. but only to try to extract a bribe from him. And it is an incredible scene because it's just like, I mean, it's funny and it's gorgeous and it's disgusting. And like there's a whole scene where like a, I mean, do you know much about sort of like Brazilian carnival season? Next to nothing besides one book I read. Okay. So like, I was actually in Pernabuco for what they call pre-carnival a couple years ago.

So it's like there's the there's the weeks leading up to carnival where you were like. society still kind of functions. And then carnival starts and it like Brazilian society basically just stops. Nothing really works. Everyone's just partying. It's great. It's beautiful. I have friends who just got back to New York from, they do like all of winter there, our winter there. And so you're sort of, it's playing with this really interesting thing where it's like, and I should also just say here, I am not a Brazilian expert. I spent a lot of time there, but it is a country that is extremely complicated with a history that like I'm only sort of vaguely aware of and I'm going to do my best not to sort of overextend here.

Brazilians, uh, justupa, uh, if, uh, I get anything wrong, you can email me angrily. You always do. Um, who correct you more? Brazilians or ARG players. I mean, both honestly equal, equal amounts. Um, but with the Brazilians, I'm like, yes, I deserve it. I got it wrong with the air. People.

I'm like, don't ever email me. Um, so. So Vagnomor's character does this long drive into Rissifi right as Carnival's kind of getting underway. And he ends up at a house full of people. And they don't really explain anything, which is kind of amazing. We actually go back to the gas station scene for two seconds. Is your read on that when the cops show up that they were suspicious of him by that time? Not at all.

That's just like, oh, there's a new person here. there's a new person for us to like extract cash room. Not even new. Not even new. I mean, he is, he's in a fairly clean car kind of. But I don't, I think this is he, like, my interpretation of that scene is that like, he could have been anybody. Interesting.

Okay. I didn't, I don't have enough historical context to, to know whether or not it was like, this is just like totalitarian, we're suspicious of anyone and anyone that like can't be bribed. get there. Well, so this is why I wanted to talk of this film because, like, that's not like the 1984 totalitarian surveillance state stuff, that's not how a dictatorship works. A detaintership works by

the cops can do whatever they want with impunity and they're just going to rob you for your cigarettes when they can't find something to like, because the whole sequence is the cops trying to find something wrong with his car so they can extract money from him. And then they're finally just like, how about you give us a donation to the local police union or whatever?

And he's like, I have cigarettes and then they just take those. And that's what I think is so crucial about this movie is that throughout, it is constantly saying all of your high-minded ideas about how well-oiled a machine a dictatorship may be. It is just a bunch of idiots and goofballs causing human misery. And that is the point. The first scene kind of, I think, is kind of crucial for understanding that because you have a literal rotting corpse next to the cops you do not care about it. And they're just trying to rob this guy for his cigarettes. It is explicitly said, We're not here for that.

We're here to see what's up with this guy's car. We're here to, like, rob this guy. Yeah, exactly. So he gets into a Siffy and he gets put up at this house that we, like, don't really know much about. And I kind of love that they actually don't ever feel the need to tell you. Because by the end of the movie, you know exactly what's going on. But, like, they're really sort of drip dropping you. And you meet the lovely Dona Sebastiana, played by Tanya Maria, who is, she's amazing because she is,

She is saying nothing but exposition, almost the entire movie, and yet does not explain anything that's going on. It's such a clever rhetorical device. And she's also just done amazing. And you know this woman, too. Like, you know the like the woman who runs the neighborhood. I have met Donna Sebastian's before. Yes. They're amazing.

Yeah. And they will yell at you and feed you. And yeah, they're incredible. There's a scene we will get to later on that stole the movie from me. Yes. The toast. You found out of the toast. She stole the movie from me.

And I, but that's a little tease. We'll get there. For the Oscar season, HBO, Brazil did this ad with Tanya Maria where they spliced her into Oscar films this year. And so she shows up in front of the Sinners Barn. And it's the footage from sinners, but they've replaced the Irish vampires with her and a bunch of Brazilians. And so they're like, basically like Michael B. Jordan's character is like, oh, can you play a little something? and then Tanya Marie and them sing like this really old Brazilian folk song. And then he's like, where are you from?

Like in the movie. And then she's like, oh, we're from Brazil. And then I guess he replies back, oh, isn't that far? And then she says, what am I? She goes, what do you think I look like? A GPS? It's adorable. Man, Warner Brothers is cooking this year.

I can't wait to see what they do next. And I really, it's really nice to have a company that I am trusting for for quality again. End of statement. Back to this movie. Right. So he gets to Rissifi, he meets Dona Sebastiania, and he meets the other people in this building. He meets Claudia, the dentist, and he meets the Angolan Civil War refugees, Teresa, Vittoria, and Antonio. And that sort of sets up this community that he's in.

And the only kind of giveaway about what is happening here is a line where, like, a guy is, like, dropping off supplies and he refers to them as refugees. and the other guys like don't call us that. And that's the only sort of in, like, the only kind of thing that makes you go like, something is up here, which I think is very clever. There's one other thing that I'd love to talk to you about for a second, which is the cat.

Can you describe the cat and the metaphor of the cat? Well, yeah, I'm curious what you think the metaphor is because I had a take on that. So there is also a two-faced cat, a literal, it is literal two cats that, like, had a birth defect and it's two cats in one basically. What do you think that symbolizes? In a movie where everyone is forced to have multiple identities,

I think it is saying that under extremism that is trying to nail you down and make you not exist in a real way, you have to splinter yourself and you can survive, but like the damage is permanent. And you're like always under threat. Like they said that like we had to take this cat in because they were they were to kill a swarm cat. And I think that that represents everyone in here.

There's a very clever like multi stage metaphor happening where Wagner Moore's character is I saw someone refer to him. I think it was a Brazilian Twitter user referred to him. They were beefing with like a sinners fan and they're like Michael B. Jordan played two characters, Wagner played three. And their argument was that Wagner's character before his wife

dies is character one. Wagner's character after his wife dies is character two. And then he plays his own son who was so good that I actually turned to my girlfriend for the middle, was like, I can't believe they found someone who looked exactly like Wagner. That's amazing.

Because not only this, I don't know if this was noticeable to you, he had, there's a bunch of comments about his accent that are happening throughout the movie. He is speaking in a Sal Paolo accent with like Pernambuco inflections. But then him as his son in the future is a just totally, and I remember like when I was in that area of Brazil, I could not understand a lick of anything anybody said because their accent is like basically north of Brazil, think of it this way. North of Brazil is like south of the south of the U.S.

The slave trade ended up sort of spitting people out in the same same way. and it's a massive hub for like leftism. So the north is, that's what, that's what all the regionality is happening in the movie. I was going to say it's like whenever I go past the New York line, I have to deal with people from the Massachusetts area, and I can't understand a goddamn word out of their Dunkin' Donuts' mouths. Also works that way.

Also works that. But yeah, so north of Brazil is sort of this massive bastion of former slave colonies that actually oftentimes would revolt and create communes. There's a lot of cool history there. Anyways, My point is there's an interesting like double or triple metaphor happening because you have the cat and Wagner Moore being literally like splintered as you said. But then the splintering further is because Wagner Moore is playing his own son.

So it's like it's very interesting what they're doing. And he is a character who has two different names. One in alias. Two different names. Two different like distinct personalities. Actors playing two different characters. Like yeah, it's a lot of that. It's really cool.

We then set up the fact that he will be working at basically like the cities like, I don't know, like a civil building that like organizes identity cards for people. Obviously like a movie about Brazil is going to have like an intense subplot about paperwork not being filed correctly. A country that runs on signing things in triplicate. One time I had to extend a visa there and it took me like four days of standing like in an office. I almost lost it. Anyways. There's a reason Terry Gillian made a movie called Brazil. So anyways, he starts working at the identity card office, and that's where he meets

Chief Euclids, Euclides, and his fail sons, one of whom is his biological white son, and then one is probably also his biological son, but they do like some kind of obs. It's like they did a really funny casting thing where like the two guys totally could be brothers. Like they've cut their hair to be balding in the same way and they have like similar mannerisms, but not really clear. They said they're like, he's like a son, you know, which I read as like,

they're saving phase that he clearly had an affair. He clearly had an affair. And instead, it's like out of the benevolence of his heart, this gangster cop. This is also, right. And this is also the section where they set up the, the sort of other main metaphor of the movie, which is the shark metaphor,

which I just think is incredible and fascinating. And I'm, not totally sure what I even think it means, actually. So I'll just tee it up and then you can talk about what it means. They get called in to this lab. They get called out of carnival, so they're covered in glitter. And the Euclids is covered in like lipstick because he's just been making out all night with people. Yeah.

For them to discover a very smelly room where there's a shark that as they were starting to dissect the shark, a human leg is protruding from the stomach. And it's very clear to at least us, the audience, probably to the scientists as well, that implication is this was a body they've thrown over that they tried to get rid of. And this leg reemerging could cause them some headaches. It becomes clear that they're using Carnival as a pretext to kill dissidents. That's that they're to disappear people. That's that and this movie, I think is very, very important in how it portrays that because I think when I say, if I were to say to you, oh, the regime of the dictatorship is disappearing people, you would think, oh, like what we saw in Minneapolis. And you got to figure this is 10 years into the dictatorship pretty much. This is like, yeah, towards, yeah, this is basically the peak of it.

And it, it has extended itself to the point where like a bunch of good old boys. in a pickup truck can also do that. Like, yeah, we're not talking about, like, the federal police in Brazil. We're talking about, like, a local police sheriff or whatever, a local police chief. And he is also now just rounding up what are implied to be, like, they have a, they use the code for who they're later in the movie, who they're rounding up. And I can't remember what the codes are. But I think it's supposed to imply that, like, they're basically just like arresting, like, gay people or people who have been accused of being communist and just like throwing them in the river

and letting sharks eat them basically. If you have a beard, you're a communist is sort of the implication. Yeah, if you're like a hippie, basically. Yeah, that's what's happening. He has a relatively tight beard, but like anytime he encounters people outside, they're telling him he looks like a communist

when he still has the beard. Oh, oh, Wagner-Morse character. Vagamores, yes. Yeah, yeah. Armando or Marcelo, Marcelo, depending on who he is in the movie at the time. Yeah. And so, yeah, we, we meet them. We sort of set up this idea of like the shark as the metaphor for the regime and the way that like the shark will kill you. But like there's always evidence. And I think that there is a huge threat in this movie that gets fleshed out like pretty soon after, which is that like it flashes forward to the 21st century and we discover that we are actually listening to tapes, which we have not. sort of understood yet, but there are two college students going through tapes. And so this idea of like a human leg is found in a shark, they have found tapes from the regime. Like that's,

that's sort of how I read it. There might, you know, be other ways to read it. But like I, I sort of, I love the idea that this movie is, is asking the question of like, not what is the value of documenting a dictatorship. But like, I would put it that people are that like the damage done in these times, people are going to be picking at the pieces for, for resolutions in a way that they cannot. There is no,

and where they're listening to the tapes, they're constantly asking what year, what day was this. It's like it's an incomplete record. All of these things are incomplete and scattered. But there's going to be, if a shark is found in a person's stomach, People are going to fucking pay attention.

Other way around. If a person's found in a shark stomach. No, I think what you're saying is right. It's like the shark exists and it will always leave evidence. But that evidence doesn't necessarily give you closure or answers. And even in the movie, like pretty quickly also that leg is then disposed of by Euclides like fail sons who basically just throw it back in the river. And then the movie wants to. hit you even further over the head with all of this by introducing Hans, a Jewish Holocaust

survivor that has to pretend to be a Nazi because it's also implied that he is gay and basically getting protection from the local sheriff by doing like a weird show and tell of his like wounds because like the guy doesn't understand that like that Germans could be Jewish and didn't fight for the German side basically. It's like they see Marcelo. He's going by Marcelo at the time and the sheriff and his failed sons. And they're like, we like the cut of your jib. Come, come, come meet this Nazi we have.

Come, come meet this Nazi we have. And harass him into showing his marks and to more insult to injury, celebrating him as a Nazi in hiding. Right. but he's actually a Jew who's definitely having... Talk about multiple identities who needs to do a performance to keep masking his existence. And the bullies are all idiots who are just happy if you are like showing them physical wounds. Right.

And like, but there's also the, I think there's definitely like a cultural dimension to this where like even to this day, Brazil has a, let's say, complicated relationship with Nazism. It is illegal. Does anywhere not have a complicated relationship with Nazism? Yeah. I mean, it is illegal to display the swastika in Brazil, which we, you know, could learn a thing or two from. On our Patreon, patreon.com, we have two, not one, but two new bonuses exclusive for

subscribers. One is about a movie we really disliked her. and the other is about a movie that rocks the secret agent, and you can listen to them both now at patreon.com slash panic world. But wait, Ryan Broderick, I hear that you can access our bonus content somewhere else now. Is that true? That's right.

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