Set in the military dictatorship of 1970s Brazil, this buzzy crime drama, which has premiered in Cannes, "makes up in pulpy excitement what it lacks in subtlety", and "bursts with sex, shoot-outs and sleazy hitmen".

One of the biggest sensations of this year's awards season was I'm Still Here, an Oscar-nominated drama about the cruelty of the military dictatorship in 1970s Brazil. Now there's another film with the same subject matter – and it, too, could make a splash when awards season rolls around again. That's not to say that The Secret Agent is quite as sensitive as I'm Still Here, but Kleber Mendonça Filho's stylish and vibrant political thriller makes up in pulpy excitement what it lacks in subtlety. Set in the northeastern city of Recife during the raucous week of carnival celebrations, it bursts with sex and shoot-outs, sleazy hitmen and vintage cars – and it features a severed human leg which is found in the belly of a shark. You'd have to assume that Quentin Tarantino is already the film's number-one fan.

Still, for all its brightly coloured, grindhouse flashiness, The Secret Agent is rooted in the real anxieties and tragedies of ordinary citizens. Indeed, its hero isn't a secret agent at all, even if Wagner Moura (Civil War, Narcos) is as tall, dark and handsome as any of cinema's super-spies. He plays the mild-mannered Marcelo, who is first seen driving into Recife in his yellow Volkswagen Beetle. It's about an hour before his identity and back story are revealed – The Secret Agent doesn't go anywhere in a hurry – but we eventually learn that he is a widowed academic who objected to a government grandee's attempts to steal his patented research. A big mistake. Marcelo now plans to reunite with his young son, who has been living with his in-laws, and to obtain the documents he needs to leave the country. In the meantime, he works undercover in a public records office, where he hopes to find even a shred of official evidence of his late mother's existence, and he stays in a dissidents' safe house overseen by a wonderfully chatty seventy-something mother hen (Tânia Maria).

Even before he reaches Recife, Marcelo happens upon a corpse on a petrol station forecourt, which no one has got around to removing, so he isn't........

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