No, nothing to do with the Joseph Conrad novel by the same title, just similarly big on corruption and tragedy. It wasn't high among my priorities for watching before the Academy Awards, but it was the only Best Picture nominee showing at a convenient time and place last night.
Most of the scenes take place on or near Carnaval 1977 in the vicinity of Recife, Brazil. Yup, it's under that government. Armando, once a researcher, has adopted the alias of Marcelo because of his dissidence, and his allies help him get clerical work in an ID office. He tries to live as normally as possible, reconnecting with his young son, who has been living with the parents of Armando's dead wife. He also reluctantly accepts protection from a corrupt civil police chief, for what that's worth when a personal enemy hires a hit man.
A recurring subplot involves the discovery of a human leg inside a dead shark, which easily captures the public interest shortly after the release of Jaws. I'm not sure how it's relevant to the rest, even metaphorically. Maybe it just fits the mood or tells a second story the filmmakers wanted. It does lead into an RL urban legend specific to Recife, apparently orchestrated as a propagandist distraction.
The R rating is for violence and a fair number of swear words, at least in subtitles. There aren't many attacks or corpses, but some moments get pretty disturbingly bloody. I'm not convinced it's realistic on that front.
I should have remembered a warning I'd read ahead of time: The narrative is not linear. Or big on coherence. For most of the 160 minutes, I thought, "Are they going anywhere with this?" The title is misleading, because Armando doesn't do any espionage, sabotage, or whatnot; he merely keeps a low profile. We never learn why anyone would pay good money to kill him.
TSA didn't bore me, but neither did it satisfy me. Even follow-up research didn't suffice. The best I can say is that I found the discernible story credible enough that I checked whether it actually happened.
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