City of God Reviews

Such an amazing film that deserves the accolades and acclaimed hype it's garnered. One of the best foreign language films there is and one of the best films personally seen recently, after a long time of being on my to see list but taking a while to get round to it due to being so busy and going through a difficult phase.

Perhaps 'City of God' is not for everybody. It is not some audience members' idea of being entertaining, and is pretty unflinching, uncompromising and challenges the viewer. It does, with that being said, a superlative job bringing those qualities to life, and there are others, including myself, who judge films by what they set out to do rather than just wanting to be "entertained". There are many hugely entertaining films, while there are others that are clearly intended to be things other than entertainment and either are deep character studies, deliberate mood pieces and poignant dramas and shouldn't be denounced because of stereotypical views of what a film should be like.

'City of God' is very well made, with some stunning and hard-hitting images, even if the budget is not high or enormous. It's all audaciously shot and edited with a lot of gritty atmosphere and sense of tension. The music fits well and has some haunting moments without being intrusive, while Fernando Meirelles's direction, particularly in the visual style, is superb.

The story is not hard to follow, with lots of provoking thought, tension and emotion, while the action is positively explosive, frighteningly brutal and designed with a real meticulousness. In no way either does it glamorise crime and gives an unflinching view of gangland rivalry, provoking comparisons to Martin Scorsese and 'Goodfellas'.

Alexandre Rodrigues and Leandro Firmino da Hora are fabulous in their roles and carry the film and their compellingly real characters adeptly.

Overall, a masterwork. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Al menos puedo entender porqué Cidade de Deus es tan aclamada como si de una obra magnánima se tratase, al fin y al cabo, tiene todo lo que me gusta de las historias sobre crimen; la pérdida de la humanidad a medida que más te vas metiendo en el mundo criminal, la gravedad de los peligros que se corren al involucrarte con toda esa gente podrida, el cómo a la larga todo ese mundillo te termina por destruir, etc.
Todos estos temas suenan realmente excelentes, y lo son, y hasta diría que genuinamente la película logra de gran manera el plasmar no solo el podrido ambiente de aquellas favelas llenas de miseria y brutalidad, sino lo que verdaderamente implicaba el pertenecer a aquellas pandillas.
La mirada que ofrece Cidade de Deus es una bastante interesante, ya que es básicamente la idea de que para ser un criminal hay que estar bajo y se debe llegar realmente bajo de Goodfellas, pero llevada a algo más ''de acá'' como lo serían las favelas brasileras, donde la brutalidad es incluso mayor y los riesgos de perder la vida son hasta cuadruplicados.
Lo mejor es el ver cómo los personajes se dejan llevar por esa vida llena de placeres evadiendo sus responsabilidades y cómo son idealizados desde pequeños con esa mugrosa forma de vivir, abandonando el tener que trabajar o estudiar para pasar a cometer crímenes, empezando por cosas no tan grandes como lo que hacía el trío ternura (las cuales eran cosas que radicaban más en la falta de dinero y en la ''necesidad''), para llegar a niveles inimaginables llegando a matar a otros por simplemente andar molestando o ser conocido de alguien que te puede llegar a meter en problemas.
Muestra también la cinta el cómo las drogas y los extremos te vuelven paranoico y desagradable, presentando a todas esas pandillas involucradas como lunáticos sin remedio que han perdido su tacto y humanidad a un punto en el que ya no pueden volver atrás.
Me agrada también el que la obra se tome el tiempo de mostrar cómo es el contexto en el que se nace lo que saca gente tan horrible.
En esas épocas, el gobierno es una porquería, lleno de gente que no tiene ni la más mínima preocupación por la gente de más abajo, y eso, de hecho, se menciona al inicio, y no es muy difícil intuir el porqué esos lugares son tan feos para vivir. ¿Qué va? Hasta nos muestran a LA POLICÍA dejándose sobornar por criminales ultra peligrosos y buscados para dejarlos libres, reafirmando el punto de que es todo una absoluta corrupción, y que es por eso que salen personas dispuestas a realizar múltiples matanzas en las cuales hasta niños pueden salir afectados.
No negaré que la cinta posee una asombrosa construcción de su escenario. Acá se presenta el rol de cada sector criminal, el cómo operan en el mundo de los narcos, la forma en la que están compuestos cada uno de los grupos y qué tipo de personas existen allí, el cómo cada negocio, persona o cosa de importancia tiene una historia y trasfondo detrás así como una razón de estar ahí, el cómo se escala dentro de las distintas jerarquías, lo tribales que llegan a ser las personas involucradas tomando en cuenta el contexto y lugar, y en sí, el film ofrece una vista muy amplia sobre el mundo de los criminales, solo superado por Goodfellas.

Todo bien hasta ahí, pero mis quejas, si bien no son tantas, radican en cosas de demasiado peso como para pasar a la cinta como excelente.
Para empezar diría que los personajes no están mal, y quiero decir, los más importantes cuentan con una buena caracterización, en especial Buscapé, pero lo malo está en que, al ser tantos los personajes, no podés llegar a entrañarte con ninguno, y ciertamente todos menos Buscapé me dieron bastante igual. De hecho, Dadinho, Bené, Cabeleira, entre otros, simplemente no me generaban nada al verlos en pantalla, y el interés en ellos se perdía entre toda la cantidad insana de personajes, no podés enfocarte en ninguno y, al estar pasando tantas cosas, no llegamos a ver lo suficiente de ellos y muchos son bastante planos si me lo preguntan. ¿Qué hay de los niños que mataron a Ze Pequenho? No sabemos literal casi nada de ellos y mataron a uno de los personajes de más relevancia en el metraje. Los personajes simplemente no son algo que esta película se quiera dedicar a profundizar, y están más cerca de ser recursos para hacer un punto o representar cierto sector del mundo de los criminales a ser otro tipo de cosa, sinceramente.
Y ese problema es el que la hace ser tan distante con Goodfellas.
Goodfellas hacía que sus personajes te interesen ya que no eran hijos de puta sin tacto todo el tiempo, sino que hasta se mostraba cómo podía haber mal en el bien y bien en el mal al ser seres con sus propias vidas y seres queridos; en Cidade de Deus... Bueno, todo el mundo está corrompido, y si bien los personajes van descendiendo conforme se avanza en la película, no quita que desde el principio estos son malas personas y poco o nada pueden interesarte fuera de que estarías deseando que los metan en la cárcel de una vez por todas. Repito, no son malos personajes, muchos están bien caracterizados, pero simplemente digo que son muchos, y no podés centrarte en ninguno así como hay varios que ni te llegan a importar en primer lugar.
Y hablando de comparaciones con Goodfellas, la película agarra temas que esta última ya había tocado mucho antes.
Todo esto de la idealización de la vida como criminal, lo mucho que te llega a pudrir el hedonismo y todo ese mambo, son cosas que, realmente, para ser lo mejor que tiene para ofrecer la cinta, Goodfellas ya tocó en el pasado y podría decir que hasta de una mejor manera, no solo por lo que ya mencioné sobre los personajes, sino que ya va más por lo de que al menos Goodfellas no necesita de ser tan desagradable a la hora de mostrar brutalidad y violencia, y ojo, no estoy en contra de que se muestren este tipo de cosas (después de todo, eso es parte de que el escenario se vea realista), pero en Cidade de Deus se llega un punto en el que se es desagradable, y más cuando los personajes están insultando en cada frase, intensificándose esto aún más en el tercer acto.
La película también omite hechos que se supone son de importancia. Con esto último voy a que la cinta pasa por algunos time-skips en los que se pasan por alto un montonal de eventos que significaron un cambio relevante para la trama, y no son presentados, o sí son presentados, pero en flashbacks o cosas así, haciendo que pierdan su impacto en el espectador.
Voy a decir también que la dirección es buena. ¿El uso de la cámara en mano para provocar esa sensación de constante peligro y un aire de ''rusticidad'' a todo para hacerlo notar como más ''bajo''? Excelente. ¿Un apartado auditivo con entonadas específicas que van con el contexto en el que la historia se desarrolla? Genial. ¿Escenarios realistas en los que cosas como la iluminación y el hecho de que se filme en las favelas posta aporten a la ambientación y lo que se genera al espectador? Brillante. Mi queja va más por el lado de que en ocasiones uno no sabe qué es lo que está pasando en pantalla exactamente, ya que con todo ese movimiento constante de la cámara y la iluminación usada en varias escenas, sumado a toda la gente hablando, recargando armas o haciendo algún otro ruido, simplemente no podés entender lo que sucede y se hace bastante molesto de visionar.
Como último punto, lo que más me incomoda de la película personalmente, y es que no veo una razón exacta de porqué la narrativa está así en primer lugar, y quiero decir, no me quejo tanto de que en ocasiones sea confuso y hayan cosas que hasta se omitan en el proceso, sino del porqué de esta estructura narrativa. Pónganse a pensar: si a la hora de contar las cosas te encaprichás con una forma caótica en la que eventos son dejados sin explicar u ocurren fuera de cámara, personajes son olvidados o en su defecto poco profundizados, cosas no quedan del todo claras o quedan a la ambigüedad, y subtramas acaban en la nada y no se terminan por relacionar con otras debido a lo rápido que todo tiene que suceder llegados a cierto punto en la película, ¿para qué vas a elegir dicha forma de contar las cosas en primera instancia? Siendo sincero no le veo sentido y ciertamente, entorpece bastante al guión. Y ojo que esto último se los dice alguien que vio Cloud Atlas, una cinta en la que hay 6 historias mezcladas entre sí contándose al mismo tiempo, y, la verdad, se entiende mucho más que Cidade de Deus, así que imagínense.
Voy a decir, para finalizar, que Cidade de Deus no es una película que caiga en lo genérico ni nada por el estilo, sino que, de hecho, hay muchas cosas que le salen bien y hasta ameritan llegar a algo de mayor calidad. Sin embargo, no puedo evitar pensar que pudo hacer mejor mucho de lo que se propuso, y se lleva a la boca más de lo que puede masticar, por lo que no me parece más que buena.

7/10

This film is incredible! I love the story and characters set in Brazil. It provides a great deal of style, and stunning photography.

Okay so I know I should have seen this as soon as I was old enough, but I just never got around to it until now. I love gang movies so I thought I should check this out finally. Also when they are based on true stories that intrigues me even more. To see how the world is around me or before my time had gone about things is rather compelling. I see a few of the actors in this also starred in Blindness which was also directed by Fernando Meirelles. I also like that the novelist who wrote the book this is based on has a cameo here.

Lil Ze has to be one of the craziest psychopaths in the world. I swear he is an incarnation of pure evil through his actions and attitude. It's quite interesting to see all the fundamentals of making a drug empire. To think that the acting is really good from all these young people in their first roles is quite amazing. One thing I have noticed is that most of the crimes in poverty stricken areas are caused by teens and children rather than adults. To think a lot of criminals in the world such as the ones depicted here are young or started off as teens and children is an intriguing nightmare of reality. It's all portrayed so well too. The violence here is graphic and intense and is displayed with relentless realism that you sometimes wonder if this is just a movie or a documentary.

I think the cinematography is stunning and different from many things. It really makes you feel like you are kind of there somehow. This movie is a very serious depiction of a chaotic drug lord's enterprise yet there was one scene I actually thought was kinda funny in a dark way. That ending was intense and brutal just like the rest of the movie. To think this was only a snippet of all the ruthlessness that goes on in that area is so eye opening. This was really well made and gripping. I couldn't turn away no matter how I felt about some of the things that happened. If you are a film connoisseur you have to include this in your film bucket list. I should have gotten to this much sooner, but it was still worth the wait. It seems that even after 13 years this film still fits well in our time.

This movie is the perfect answer for you if you get tired from the repetitiveness and the over-simplified characters of mainstream Hollywood, as this movie take place in a different part of the world, far away from the glamorization and conventional bullshit that we're used to.

Based on a true story (entirely or to some degree), this movie slap you in the face with it violence, and it successfully manage to show you how violent people are created, from the discriminated people who just want to prove themselves, or the people who want to fill a gap in them by gaining control over territories and doing whatever possible to be known and feared.

Taking place in 'City of God' which is a housing project in Rio de Janeiro, formed by the government for the people who fled their areas from floods in 1960, this movie shows you how this small project area turned into the most dangerous place in Rio de Janeiro in the 80's, as young people there started forming small gangs to control the city taking advantage of the non-existence and/or the corruption of police. Narrated entirely by Buscapé whose a wanna-be photographer who lived in the city and watched the gangs being formed and taking over places, to start dealing with drugs and weapons and competing to gain control over the City of God.

The first thing that stuck me about this movie is the ability of those young people, in which most of them aren't actors at all, to deliver, fantastic performances, adding to that the incredible writing and screenplay and the very stylist directorial skills and you have one the best foreign films of all time. it's a masterful work from the start to finish as it keep you glued to the screen the entire time with it incredible story and acting, it's also highly disturbing as it get's very deep into criminals mindset in which most of them are just kids, something, you don't see everyday.

The director Fernando Meirelles have this amazing ability to repeat the same scene from a different angle each time, as the narrator Buscapé tell the story of each character independently and then combine all that together in one scene, and you don't get to see it the same way, to avoid the repetitiveness of repeating, the director give you the same scene in a different way, and it was so perfectly executed that you can swear it can't be the same scene.

What makes this movie very powerful is the ability to capture so much emotions from people, in which most of them aren't actors, even from kids, it gets so deep on characters and explain so much, without actually explaining, just by the look on the scattered emotions you can understand so much, a quality that even the most praised movies fail to show, like that last scene, when the kid start following his "gang" and shouting at them to wait for him, and loss his sandal while running and they start laughing at him, it just show so many things, and it perfectly combines child innocence with violent criminals, it's almost satirical approach to criminals but it also highly disturbing, as it show that those empty discriminated kids can be way more dangerous than adult criminals for lacking of morals, and i highly praise the director for showing that, it's a Masterpiece.

One of the most shocking, intelligently fast-paced narratives I have ever seen. Amazing cinematography!

A powerful and haunting film that explores the myriad of stories that lie deep within the slums of Rio, City Of God shocks, enlightens and above all affects us by taking us into a world where drugs and organised crime are a way of life. Meirelles's intense and extraordinary film marries the rhythms and flavours of Rio seamlessly with the human drama... The visceral music pumps its way through our veins for the entire 130 minutes, colouring the violence with the very brush that is Rio. And as the fates of Rocket and L'il Ze come together, they face each other with two very different weapons: a gun and a camera. The circle of life continues and we realize that we have only just had a small taste of life in The City of God. Uncompromising and totally unforgettable, this is an experience to savour.

The film revolves around the, 'City of God,' a favela (or ghetto) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a horrifying area where drug dealers run the community, and where children killing children is not an uncommon occurrence.

The story begins with the early stages of the City of God (in the 1960's) showing where many of the problems stem from- the extreme poverty, overcrowding etc. Here, in the early stages of the favela, we meet our main characters, along with the supporting cast. The story revolves mainly around two characters living in the favela, Rocket and Lil Ze, and how they take two different paths through life. Rocket's dream is to become a photographer and to escape the City of God while Lil Ze becomes a powerful gang leader and drug dealer.

The film offers an unflinching look at gang life in the City of God, as it follows the favela through three decades; the 60's, 70's and 80's, and shows how violence just spirals into more violence with the disturbingly high amounts of violence in the favela, most involving teenagers and children.

The direction, cinematography, and editing are all Oscar-worthy. The cinematography is some of the best I have ever seen- with a very visceral, jerky feel, very reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan. The editing is very frantic, which makes you feel like you are on the streets of the City of God, and the direction is flawless, seamlessly blending the many elements of the story.

The film was definitely one of the best films I have ever seen. The story, the direction, the cinematography, the editing and the acting all add up to make a excellent movie that I would recommend to all.

I already saw this movie but since it was a while back, I thought I might as well check it out again. The first time around, I was just so completely blown away and, at the time, I was convinced that it was one of the best movies I have ever seen. Well, 20 years later, I was still impressed by the damned thing and, after all these years, it is still one of the best movies I have ever seen. First of all, the way it was shot was really neat. Indeed, this movie was really stylized but also quite realistic at the same time which was really cool. It had some complex shots and nice visuals but it remained raw at the core at the same time. But it was not one of those movies with some nice visuals but rather tedious, no, here, the story keeps you on the edge from the beginning until the very end and it was just quite fascinating. I thought that the characters were all intriguing, even the smaller ones, and even though there were many characters, it was so well written that you could easily follow what was going on and who’s who and who was doing what. How they managed to make such an entertaining and insightful movie in one of the most dangerous places on earth is quite a marvel and a mystery to me. Eventually, the only thing that stil bothers me with this movie each time I watch it is some minor detail with the subtitles. Indeed, instead of calling the main character simply 'Buscapé', they tried to translate this name and call him instead 'Rocket' and they did this with basically all the characters in this movie which was just so disorienting. Sure, I get that, without translating their names, you wouldn't get the signification of their nicknames but this approach was just distracting but, once again, it was just a minor flaw. Anyway, to conclude, I believe it is a great achievement, one of the best movies out there and it is pretty much a must see for any decent movie lover.