A Drug dealer loves to be the talk of the town while his second is a photographer who captures every event that surrounds him thereby increasing the rivalry.
Fernando Meirelles' Brazilian slum epic is a profound, stylistically expansive depiction of three decades of child gang warfare on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro with non-actors playing their poverty-ridden lives for the camera.
Another passionate piece of Latin American filmmaking, which documents a tragic period in Rio's history and highlights the horrors of life in poverty-line communities. Technically a remarkable filmmaking achievement too.
City of God delivers a bruising, visceral experience of the vicious spiral of violence that draws kids into a life of crime, brutality and murder as the only avenue open to them.
Brazillian director Mereilles' splashy feature debut, a dynamically exciting portrait of Rio's violent gangs, immediately established himsef as an international talent to watch, and the Oscar nods only reaffirmed that status.
Hard to watch but even harder to tear your eyes away from.
Suite101.com
September 25, 2010
Each chapter is endowed with powerful, uncompromising, beguiling and, sometimes, deceptive momentum. What seem like innocuous turns become so critical to the narrative that they tie into the ruthless idea at hand: You never see the bullet that kills you.
The living conditions it projects are as horrendous as I had feared, but the movie is surprisingly easy to take as a rollicking homicidal entertainment.