Elite Squad: The Enemy Within Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within Blu-ray Movie Review

Trouble in Paradise.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 12, 2012

The favelas (or slums) of Rio de Janeiro cling to the hillsides surrounding the glittering metropolis and stare down on the bright, shining cityscape and gleaming beaches like some jealous stepchild envying its more legitimate, better heeled sibling. The favelas probably never really entered the world consciousness until Marcel Camus’ iconic Black Orpheus became an international sensation in the late fifties (and, incidentally, introduced the world to the Bossa Nova). The military dictatorship that swept into power in Brazil in the sixties may have successfully squelched further notice of the favelas, and Brazil was often thought of in those days as a sort of almost mystical paradise, at least when seen from afar. Those who actually visited Rio may have been shocked by the huge disparities in class evident as soon as they ventured outside of the downtown core. But the favelas have increasingly played at least a part in several notable efforts, whether literary or cinematic, over the past several years, including such sensational fare as Fernando Meirelles’ City of God. Another film which plied somewhat the same territory as City of God was the spectacularly successful The Elite Squad from 2007, a film which won the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. Director and co-writer Jose Padilha’s somewhat disturbing thesis in The Elite Squad was that the drug trade had become so endemic to the favelas, and had the implicit support of the police force itself, that only a major “new world order,” perhaps akin to Fascism, could rescue Brazil. The Elite Squad: The Enemy Within doesn’t exactly make a much cheerier case for the prospects for either politically expedient ends or for the ability of police to escape the temptations of corruption to effectively handle an out of control criminal element.

It’s probably no mere coincidence that Padilha ports over a real life surname from his highly regarded documentary debut Bus 174 to both of his Elite Squad films. Bus 174 recounts the real life horror of a young man named Nascimento who took a bus full of passengers hostage in Rio in 2002. Nascimento in that film stood as a fitting symbol for the almost pawn-like life so many denizens of the favelas find themselves inextricably ensconced in. In The Elite Squad, the chief character (and not so incidentally, also the narrator) is a Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE in Portuguese) Captain named Roberto Nascimento (Wagner Moura). Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within starts with a blistering sequence, narrated by Nascimento, where the policeman recounts how he put a lot of bad guys in jail, exposed a bunch of corrupt cops, and refused to toe the party line, all making him the object of scorn, derision and, in a horrifying scene, a hail of bullets. The film then backtracks four years to reveal what has gone on in the wake of the first Elite Squad film.

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within posits a world of moral turpitude where even well meaning people are sucked into a life of questionable ethics and ambivalent motivations. Nascimento is shown to be one of the few outright “good guys” in Rio, a man uncompromising and uncompromised. A prison hostage crisis plays out in the early scenes of the film which soon involves a well meaning though perhaps naïve history professor named Fraga (Irandhir Santos), a left leaning political activist who believes, rightly or wrongly, that a little empathy and understanding can go a long way to ameliorating both the crime situation in Rio as well as this particular hostage crisis. Fraga’s participation in trying to defuse the crisis brings him into direct confrontation with Nascimento, who basically wants to blast to smithereens all of the hostage takers, all of them drug lords or operatives who are still plying their trade even while locked up in a maximum security prison.

The outcome of that hostage crisis sets both men’s careers on completely unexpected paths. Nascimento, initially decried for having caused a bloodbath, soon becomes a public hero, and Fraga, who appeals to the younger, more liberal crowd, soon finds himself a State Representative. Both men seem only too aware they’re swimming with sharks, though neither really has the wherewithal to effectively deal with the situation on his own. As the two parallel stories play out, a number of other interrelated subplots are explored, including the complicity of the police with the drug dealers of the favela and a right wing television host who is whipping up public foment for his own nefarious ends.

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within is not an especially easy film to stomach, being so rife with moral squalor as it is. Nascimento and Fraga are both working for good, but are at loggerheads with each other, until the film’s climactic showdown, where Nascimento’s courage momentarily seems like it will set things right, at long last. But in a system where the deck is stacked so completely against change, Padilha makes it frighteningly clear that any real transformation is probably going to take generations. The film offers some incredibly disturbing violence, on both the part of the police and the drug dealers, but what is ultimately the most disturbing is how “normal” these events seem to everyone.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of New Video Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Padilha utilizes both the glamour and the squalor of Rio as alternating characters, and the outdoor location shooting looks stupendous, with some amazing depth of field. One very well staged sequence follows a helicopter raid of the favelas, and despite the sequence being shot with hand held cameras, no egregious motion judder or similar distractions detract from the image's overall stability. A lot of the film takes place in less than brightly lit environments, but this high definition presentation boasts impressive shadow detail. Colors are often bold, though Padilha tends to skew things toward a slightly green side of things. Despite this filtering, fine detail remains strong throughout the film.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within offers two stupendously effective lossless audio options, a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo mix, and a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix, both in the film's original Portuguese. To say that these mixes are aggressive is a bit of an understatement, as from virtually the first moment, when a van is hit with a fusillade of bullets, to several more incredibly visceral moments of gunfire and violence, the film rarely lets up from either an immersion or an LFE standpoint. The surround mix manages to convey both an admirable spaciousness as well as a certain claustrophopic feeling that plays very well into the film's increasingly dour view of Rio's ability to escape its own self-inflicted nightmare of crime. Dialogue is very cleanly presented, and the underscore is also very well utilized and mixed. Fidelity is excellent throughout the track and dynamic range is amazing.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Making of Featurette (1080i; 56:56) is a good, in-depth look at the film and the history it fictionalizes. Director Jose Padilha talks about his trilogy about urban violence, which started with Bus 174 and continued through to the two Elite Squad films. Padilha makes a cogent case that the State is responsible for the corruption of the police force. Most of the principal cast is also interviewed and give their opinions not just about their characters, but about the actual sociopolitical movements that are being depicted. This piece isn't really a standard "making of" featurette and deals more with the subtext of Brazil's socioeconomic problems, and for that, it's a much more interesting documentary than most of these supplements are.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within is, if anything, even more dour and depressing than The Elite Squad. Rio's crime problem has become the stuff of legend (and the interesting thing is, if you talk to native Brazilians, they'll tell you Rio's problems pale in comparison to some of the other metropolises in the country, especially Sao Paolo). Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within casts a disturbing look on how certain political elements in consort with the police and the very profitable drug trade work in tandem to keep a ruling class of sorts in power, while scores of pawns are left to rot in the favelas. Padilha stages the film magnificently, and Moura and Santos both deliver energetic and natural performances. With the spotlight shining on these problems with films like Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (which has become one of the all time blockbusters in Brazilian film history), maybe things can finally start to change for the better. But Padilha himself would probably be the first to say, "Don't hold your breath." This Blu-ray offers superior video and audio and an excellent in-depth featurette, and it comes Highly recommended.