Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha's brutal crime thriller is the flip side of Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund's 2002 CITY OF GOD: An unsparing look at the day-to-day war between law and anarchy in Rio de Janero's desperate, crime-ridden favelas told from the side of the police.
Captain Nascimento (Wagner Maura) has devoted his career to BOPE, the military police unit charged with maintaining some kind of order – or at least status quo -- in the favelas, where drug lords and gang bosses maintain the heavily armed equivalent of standing armies and keep crooked cops on their payrolls, while ordinary citizens just try to stay out of their way. But now that his wife is pregnant, Nascimento wants out, which means finding and training a replacement. Meanwhile, childhood friends Matias (Andre Romiro) and Neto (Caio Junqueira) have entered BOPE cadet training; Neto is a hotheaded thrill junkie, while Matias hopes to become a lawyer and spends his spare time volunteering with an NGO that works in the slums; he has to keep the fact that he's a cop quiet, since the police in general and BOPE in particular, are widely despised as fascist cowboys who shoot first and quash questions later. At the same time, the Pope is scheduled to visit Rio and the police force are under orders to keep things quiet and orderly; BOPE is given specific orders to secure the Turano favela, which Nascimento knows will mean blood in the streets. He comes across Matias and Neto while assembling his team and decides that one will be his successor: The question is which one will survive the brutal training..
Though a huge hit in Brazil, Padilha's film was criticized abroad for glorifying vigilante justice. But its perspective is more complex than that of, say, a DIRTY HARRY or DEATH WISH film: Its bitter has deep roots in Brazil's long history of street violence and police corruption, and it never descends to knee-jerk liberal baiting -- the social reformers who attempt to address the root causes of urban crime aren't subjected to scorn or derision; Matias' NGO friends Roberta and Rodrigues (Fernanda de Freitas, Andre Mauro), who die horrendous deaths at the hands of ghetto thug, are the victims of pathology -- their own naïve good intentions merely provide an opportunity. (In Portuguese, with subtitles) leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
