New Delhi, March 14 -- A corpse lies outside a gas station. It's been under the blazing sun for the past three days. The police have been called, but they're busy. When they do arrive, it's just as Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura, Narcos) is about to drive off. The cops direct their attention not to the body, but to him. "You can trust me," says one officer, in the tone of voice that immediately implies otherwise. They examine his documents, search his car. It's a menacing enough sequence but the eventual reveal that Armando is in hiding, travelling under an alias-and is a target of Brazil's dictatorship-retroactively adds another layer of peril to this suffocating scrutiny.

"I wanted it to be like those James Bond movies, which begi...