TITLE: City of God
DIRECTORS: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund (co-director)
WRITERS: Paulo Lins (novel), Bráulio Mantovani (screenplay)
TAGLINE: "If you run you're dead...if you stay, you're dead again. Period."
CAST: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Phellipe Haagensen, Douglas Silva, Jonathan Haagensen, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge

Story: Gangsters killing one another. But this is a no non-sense film, it is even touching at some point.

Set in the 60’s in a ghetto of Rio de Janeiro, the film brings you to the lives of those people living in the slum, to their violent world: young armed thuds smashing other people’s properties to steal and their younger siblings watching them like heroes as they do it.

Then these younger fellows grow up to be just like their older brothers, who at this time, are already long dead.

There are several characters in the story. I’ll talk about Rocket and Li’l Ze being the most significant ones. Rocket wants to be a photographer while his neighbor Li’l Ze wants to become a hoodlum just like his brother. While still young, Li’l Ze has already seen the danger of living in their world: police ransacking their homes to find their brothers held as suspects and killing them if found or their brothers killing innocent people for money, and has come to love every moment of it. Cruelty is actually an understatement for this movie.

Already grown up, Li'l Ze, who at a young age (called Li'l Dice) just for the love of being in control killed several people while tasked to serve as lookout while his brother and friends were robbing a hotel, becomes a powerful drug dealer in their city. He is not only a drug lord that manufactures and sells drugs to everyone who wants it, he also kills everyone who tries to stop it. And while he is busy building up his empire and killing people along the way, the other boy Rocket is still living in poverty. The boy’s only dream is only to become a photographer anyway.

Then comes another interesting character of Knockout Ned, a man whose girlfriend was raped and murdered before his very eyes by Li’l Ze because she refused to dance with him. To take vengeance for his girlfriend (and members of his family who became Ze’s next victims) Knockout Ned then becomes a part of another group that wants to end Ze’s killing spree. You may ask what is the police doing at this time? The police is, as you’ve already guessed it, also plays its own part of the gangster’s game by receiving its share of drug monies. Why, peace should have been there had this force been doing its job.

So it’s war between the two rival gangs now. It starts with the chasing of a chicken by Ze’s group. The runaway chicken crosses to the other side of the road where Rocket, who at this time is already a photographer of a local daily after his picture of Ze and his gang members accidentally got published, is walking with a friend. And while the young photographer is trying to catch the chicken to give it to the waiting party at the other end, Knockout Ned’s group arrives at the opposite end. Rocket is now caught between the two clashing parties, all armed and ready to shoot.

And then war breaks free.

Fortunately, Rocket is saved by his amazing power to duck and roll. And gets the best shots of the war that is going on around him.

The war kills Knockout Ned, who is shot by their new recruit, a little boy who only wants to get even with the killer of his father. It turns out that that killer is Knockout Ned, who died while trying to save the avenger.

Then police comes in the scene a bit on time. Leaders of the two groups are arrested including Ze. Police chief then brings Ze to his lair to get payment in exchange of his freedom. And since Ze invested most of his money on guns, he only has so little to give to the police. He is so broke. After getting a few of Ze’s money, police then leaves the broke drug dealer alone, who promises to bring his empire back. But even before he could say it, the little boys, I mentioned earlier, now with their real guns, mercilessly shoot him to death. They take over his business.

That’s how brutal it is.

There is no happy ending to this story.

You will learn that this is based on real events. There is even a clip of an interview of Knockout Ned before he died. He said there something like how the police at that time turned a deaf ear to their cries….

The movie in 2004 was nominated for 4 Oscars.

Labels: crime, drama, thriller