Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

City of God Blu-ray Movie Review

Bless the beasts and the children.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 11, 2011

From the outside, Rio de Janeiro seems to be one of the most fabulously glamorous metropolises in the world. Incredibly scenic, with a gorgeous half moon beach bordering the teal ocean waters the lap at the city’s edge, and with such iconic attractions as the giant statue of Christ which adorns Corcovado, Rio seems to scintillate with the rhythms of the samba, alive with 24 hour a day partygoers and seemingly without a care in the world. Appearances can be deceiving. Brazil’s incredible music reached out and literally grabbed hold of me when I was probably nine or ten and I was introduced to the seductive sounds of the Bossa Nova. Though it was already well past the days of the “Bossa Nova craze,” I was immediately hooked and dove headlong into what became a lifelong near obsession with Brazil’s music, and that ultimately led of course to me attending a theatrical screening of Black Orpheus, which luckily was playing at an Art House when I was in college. Though the musical content of the Marcel Ophuls film was obviously of major interest to me and incredibly exciting, what really threw me for a loop was the sight of Rio’s favelas (slums), teeming shanty towns that are precariously attached to the near vertical topography that surrounds the main downtown core of the city. Even the gritty ambience of Black Orpheus might seem glamorous in comparison to the depiction of life in the favelas in City of God, the acclaimed 2002 film based on an equally acclaimed autobiographical book by Paulo Lins. Playing out like some sort of Brazilian version of a cocaine fueled Warner Brothers gangster flick from the thirties, City of God recounts the “adventures” (for wont of a better word) of a hardscrabble group of kids who grow up on the mean streets (actually dirt roads) of one of Rio’s most infamous housing projects, the ludicrously named City of God. Told from the viewpoint of one youngster named Rocket, the film moves through several decades in the lives of several main characters, whose interrelationships change and evolve (sometimes devolve) in an amazing kaleidoscope of violence and gang activity.

A chicken which perhaps senses it’s about to be led to the chopping block manages to break free of its tether and starts a mad dash through the crowded streets of Rio. Several close calls seem to spell an end to the fowl, and yet it manages somehow to survive. Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) wanders into the melee caused by the errant bird and the crowd chasing it, just as he discusses with a friend his dreams of getting out of the favela by pursuing a career in photography, if only he can escape the clutches of notorious slum thug Li’l Zé (Leandro Firmino da Hora), who Rocket avers is out to kill him. As luck would have it, Li’l Zé happens to be one of the group trying to retrieve the chicken, and his whole gang is armed to the teeth. A showdown seems to be brewing with several guns aimed directly in Rocket’s direction. This is the exciting and visceral first few minutes of City of God, a sequence which ably sets up the chaos which is about to unfold over the next two hours. As a bullet flies toward Rocket, we’re catapulted back in time to the sixties, when the major characters were much younger.

City of God plays with time almost like Russian nesting dolls, unfolding one fractured flashback within another so that time becomes as senseless as the lives many of those caught in the favelas. Rocket is our anchor throughout the madness, acting not only as protagonist but also as narrator, although the film veers from being strictly his point of view and veers off into numerous tangents and other lives as it meanders its way (rather forcefully, actually) through the various back alleys of the City of God, uncovering webs of deceit and moral turpitude. Rocket seems somehow strangely immune to the forces at work around him, a sort of chicken desperately trying to fly (flee?) the coop.

It turns out Rocket’s older brother Goose is one of a trio of amateur criminals who act as the City of God’s group Robin Hood, robbing passing rice trucks and passing out food and cash to the locals. The young child Li’l Zé (portrayed by Douglas Silva at this age in a frighteningly vicious performance) wants in on the action and dreams of one day taking over all of the criminal activity in the City of God. He’s come up with a master plan to rob a local hotel, which Goose and his compadres agree to do. Li’l Zé (known at this point in his life as Li’l Dice) is put out that they won’t let him take part in the actual robbery and he decides to take matters into his own hands. That sets a cascading series of domino effects in motion that will spill forward for several decades.

Rocket is an affable kid seeing a whole host of people getting killed or caught up in corruption and/or drugs (though he’s not above taking a toke or two himself), and though he’s never a participant in any of the criminal activity, he is complicit in a way simply by being there as so much of it unfolds over the course of the seventies and early eighties. Like a slightly stoned narrator might, Rocket’s reminiscences branch off into unexpected territory at the drop of a hat. An anecdote about Goose, his doomed older brother, segues into a tangentially related story about Shorty, an older man who ends up committing a horrific crime which is at least partially attributable to Goose’s behavior. Over and over again City of God defies expectations by leading the viewer down totally unforeseen paths, until suddenly about two thirds of the way through the film, the battle lines have been drawn, and Li’l Zé, now an adult, is involved in a deadly serious turf war with another thug named Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge). Rocket is the unlikely and unwitting intermediary for no other reason than that he’s been around for so long and interacted with both of these characters for virtually his whole life.

City of God is by its very nature anecdotal and that may lead some to think there’s not much dramatic coherence or arc to the film, but for those who can deal with the film’s deliberately chaotic structure, there’s an intensely disturbing and evocative film here detailing desperate lives which have no easy escape route. Director Fernando Meirelles and scenarist Bráulio Mantovani might be faulted for crafting a film which really has few shades of gray. Rocket is our hero and he is for the most part an upstanding and innocent young man caught in untenable circumstances. The rest of the throngs surrounding Rocket (with the possible exception of a couple of women who float into Rocket’s view, and one or two friends of the lad) are all pretty vicious thugs and there’s not a lot of nuance in their characters. That actually helps to make the film incredibly visceral and impactful, but it also lends the film a certain hyperbolic air that some may find objectionable and even a detriment to the film’s message.

But part of that message is indeed that the socioeconomic forces surrounding these kids is shaping their lives in unimaginable ways. Violence is rampant and there’s a “take before it’s taken from you” mentality that drives every move they make. Rocket, finding himself caught between two opposing gangs, both with guns aimed at each other with him in between, quotes a Brazilian adage which the subtitles translate as “If you run, they catch you; if you don’t run, they catch you.” City of God spends most of its time detailing that hopeless situation in some detail, but it also offers a glimmer of grace in Rocket’s ability to ferret out a way to freedom.

City of God Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

City of God is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate/Miramax with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Meirelles and his cinematographer César Charlone cast the favela in an impossibly golden hue a lot of the time and that creates a dusty saffron ambience that is distinctly at odds with the gritty lives the characters are leading. The film is intentionally filtered to both yellow and blue extremes quite a bit of the time, but for the most part fine detail is exceptional, especially in close-ups. Some sequences, as in the swimming hole segment early in the film, suffer from quite noticeable softness, and perhaps those were done by a second unit with different equipment. But considering how dark (as in dimly lit) a lot of this film is, shadow detail is well above average even when contrast fluctuates from sequence to sequence. Some of Charlone's naturalistic lighting creates incredible plays of shadow and light, and those help to make City of God incredibly moody and ominous a lot of the time.

City of God Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

City of God's original Portuguese language track is presented with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that is abundantly boisterous. The film has some fantastic source cues which throb through the surrounds, and the busy life of the favela is really well detailed sonically throughout the film, with extremely well placed surround activity and a sort of aural sense of claustrophobia a lot of the time. Fidelity is excellent, and low end is especially fulsome here, with great blasts of LFE not only in the expected places like scenes involving gunfire, but also just generally in the low hum of the crowded slum life. Dialogue is crisp, clear and well prioritized with the music and effects. It should be noted that the Setup menu only allows one of the subtitle options to be chosen; there's no way to turn subtitles off.

City of God Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

News from a Personal War (SD; 56:42). This riveting documentary explores the ravages that the drug trade has had on the favelas (the slums) of Rio de Janeiro. It's a disturbing and pretty depressing piece that chronicles the slow slide into degradation that many residents of the favelas experience, and how the proliferation of both drugs and guns have made life intolerable for many if not most who are ensnared in this stratum of Brazil's socioeconomic system.

City of God Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

City of God advertised itself as having been based on a true story, and while there's no doubt some hyperbolic fictionalizing at work in this film adaptation, there's also the ring of truth about it on a fundamental level. This is a disturbing film, and one that is not easy to take at times (especially if you have kids), but it's one of the most riveting exposés of a poverty stricken class' destitution and the horrible choices so many of them make. This Blu-ray looks fine and sounds fantastic, and the release comes Recommended.