20 Recent Movie Scenes NOBODY Saw Coming
1. The Hairy Leg - The Secret Agent
And finally, though all the awards buzz might've led you to believe that The Secret Agent is a Very Serious Political Thriller, it nevertheless features one of the craziest asides of any film this past year.
Midway through the movie, Sergio (Igor de Araújo) and Arlindo (Italo Martins), the sons of the corrupt local police chief, dispose of a severed human leg that's found inside a captured shark.
They dump the leg in the Capibaribe River, where it suddenly comes to life and begins attacking gay men cruising in the nearby park at night.
It's a completely insane scene that feels wholly out of step with the rest of the movie, at least until you appreciate its historical context.
The "Hairy Leg" story was genuinely reported in Brazilian newspapers in the late 1970s as it allowed journalists to write veiled exposés of the military dictatorship without calling them out explicitly, the absurd framing giving them plausible deniability.
And like that, one of the year's most indelible cinematic moments was born.