True story based upon the life of children growing up in the harsh slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the 60’s through 70’s. It involves all the harsh realities of the slum world such as drug rackets, gang war and violence.
I ain’t much of a writer myself but I was really lookin’ forward to write a review on this movie. Lemme start by sayin’ that this movie is no short of an epic movie. I haven’t been as capitulated by a movie in a long long time. This movie feels like watching a documentary about the dirty slums of Rio. The most interesting feature of the movie is the number of characters introduced throughout the movie. Each one’s tale given, starting with their childhood, teen years and into adulthood. It also uses a pretty cool technique which allows it to go off into tangents every now and again, while never losing focus on the big picture and the characters at hand. Love it when the narrator says, ’’But it’s not time to tell that story just yet...that’s later’’.
Although the movie is brazilian and subtitled in english I never for a second lost my focus on the proceedings. The pattern of story telling is quite nonlinear which does remind me of Tarantino or Guy Ritchie ’s kinda story telling. The entire movie branches out from the root character ’’Rocket’’ and then branches out to many interesting characters such as Benny (the coolest Gangster in the town), the scary L’il Ze and the tender trio.
Ballsy, energetic, violent, poetic, stylized, authentic and highly gripping, CITY OF GOD is a movie that I won’t soon forget and one that I hope that you will try to go out of your way to see as well.