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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 79.17%
Worth A Look: 13.33%
Just Average: 1.67%
Pretty Crappy: 2.5%
Sucks: 3.33%
5 reviews, 90 user ratings
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| City of God |
by Brian McKay
"God really must be an absentee landlord"
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Ironically named, the Brazilian slum known as the City of God is a Hell on Earth. It's a place where rape, robbery, and murder occur on a daily basis, and where acts of extreme violence have become the numbing norm. It's the kind of place that everyone wants to get away from, but where everyone goes to buy their drugs (and I do mean EVERYONE).Amid all of this chaos is Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a Black kid growing up in the so-called City of God, and trying desperately not to become a thug like everyone around him, including his older brother and his friend Bene (Phellipe Haagensen). As we witness what Rocket sees growing up during the 60's and 70's, we see how every aspect of life is touched by violence. After breifly trying his hand at thug life and failing miserably (he can never quite bring himself to rob any of his intended victims, after meeting them first and deciding that they are "too cool"), he finds that his only ticket out of the Ciudad de Deus is a battered camera. He finds himself caught between a news-hungry periodical and a fame-hungry crew of thugs led by nice-guy gangster Bene and his completely ruthless and sociopathic partner Li'l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora), who guns down enemies and friends alike with the thoughtlessness of pitching a cigarette butt.
Ironically, what Rocket thought would be his ticket out of the ghetto ends up taking him right back there, as his demanding employers and his own hunger for success and notoriety urge him deeper into the City of God's underworld. Using his childhood connection with all of his old friends (who have all grown up to be teenage drug lords), he manages to take the front-page photos that no other photographer ever could. After fearing for his life initially, when his pictures of gun-toting thugs are published without his permission by the newspaper, he is shocked to discover that the starstruck Li'l Ze adores having his picture in the paper and allows Rocket to take all the pictures he wants.
Punctuating all of this are some disturbing scenes of violence (and I don't disturb easily, folks) from which nobody is spared (in one scene, a gang member's initiation trial is to choose which of two young boys he should shoot in the head). Some terrific directing and fantastic camera work aside, the film exposes one to a seemingly endless cascade of shootings and beatings until one becomes numb - leaving the viewer with both a sense of despair that such a place exists, and a sense of relief when the film finally ends. It often muffles the graphic nature of the violence just slightly with a clever camera angle, but never pulls its punches. The cast (most of which was composed of young street kids) is uniformly credible to the point of being unsettling (especially the kid who plays the boyhood version of Li'l Ze).
Although I have only seen a handful of Brazilian films, this one continues the alarming trend witnessed in other recent films like Bus 174 and O Homem do Ano(Man of the Year) - all films that paint a portrait of a culture besieged by violence. How much of it the film exaggerates is unknown, but after hearing Man of the Year director José Henrique Fonseca divulge that he had been robbed at gunpoint five times in the space of three years, I think I'll take their word that there is some fucked-up repugnant shit going on in their country.But while CITY OF GOD is most certainly an indictment of the evils that Brazil is beset with, one never doubts that the filmmakers love their country and people. More than anything, films like CITY OF GOD are a wake up call, both to their own countrymen and the world, that something must change. Yet the only answer it finds is the most daunting question - "How?"
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=6574&reviewer=258
originally posted: 03/05/04 00:22:41
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2003 Palm Springs Film Festival. For more in the 2003 Palm Springs Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2002 Vancouver Film Festival. For more in the 2002 Vancouver Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
17-Jan-2003 (R)
DVD: 08-Jun-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
13-Mar-2003
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