'The Secret Agent' Review: '70s Brazilian Romp Includes Wagner Moura and a Rampaging Severed Leg

The opening credits to director Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent" set the scene as Brazil, 1977, and then add, "a period of great mischief." And that might be an appropriate capsule description of the film itself, a mischievous romp that includes secret identities, corrupt cops, intricate schemes, Carnaval frivolity, a severed leg inside a shark's stomach, some very bloody and brutal action, a deliberately garish '70s cinema style and a bit of thoughtfulness and emotion spread out over almost two and a half hours. Does it all hold together? Nope. "The Secret Agent" . . .