a powerhouse crime saga, with a fierce, daunting fusion of style

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2003)

City of God played for months on end at an the Angelika theater in New York City back in 2003, and I was hesitant whether or not I should go there to spend ten dollars and to sit in a little theater with a packed audience, or to wait in video. I gave in to my temptations to see the film, from what I heard from various reviewers, and by the end, I knew it was truly worth the admission, and then some. Director Fernando Meirelles, along with co-director Katia Lund, crafts a film that steams so much with a passion to tell this story, to reveal all these characters (most of which who wear their flaws right on their sleeves like badges of honor), and to be honest with how their tales unfold, that even the most die-hard of action film or gangster connoisseur will feel the visceral, hardcore nature of the City of God long after the lights come up, subtitles and all.
This true story (from a novel by Paulo Lins, former resident in the slums) is told, much like Scorsese's master-work Goodfellas, in a kind of flashback format where the narrator takes us back to the City of God when the lower class were shuffled into the slums of Rio De Janeiro without much hope. Our narrator, who only calls himself Rocket until the end, lives amongst the Tender Trio, friends of his whom start out robbing oil trucks and whatever they can get their hands on to stay alive. An impromptu heist at a motel gets the cops swarming, and the trio becomes scattered, though not dissolved. As it proceeds into the seventies, we find out that some members of the group died, a few went to jail, and Rocket stays on the sidelines, hoping to become a professional photographer with little or no assets to become one in and outside of the City of God.
Then there's Li'l Dice (played through most of the film by the equally terrifying and gleeful Firmino Da Hora), who in the first act of the film is a kid who's the smallest among the bunch of older teens who make more or less successful robberies, though as Rocket says "You need more than guts to be a good gangster, you need ideas." In flashback (not to spoil) we discover what went down at the motel that night, and from there in a brilliant stroke of editing we see how Li'l Dice became Li'l Ze, who rises up little by little in the drug dealing schematics of the slum and soon takes over a supplier to sell cocaine. Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) may be the protagonist viewers can identify with, but Li'l Ze is as fascinating an antagonist as any I have seen in a long time, who masks his insecurities with boyish joy in all of the mayhem he creates. Otherwise without hope, Li'l Ze becomes the dominant supplier in the slums, something of a tyrannical businessman, and as his story unfolds as does Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge), who becomes Ze's rival in the eighties.
The only way a movie like this could work is if we feel for the characters plights and heights and such, even if they're evil in nature like Li'l Ze, Carrot, and Knockout Ned. That's why the filmmakers plunge us right into the City of God, and the nature of the city, and while the narrator may pass judgment on people he's known his whole life, he like us know why they're up to no good. The thieves and dealers and killers became such by looking up to their role models, the older hoods of the region, and with each younger group of kids who want to smoke dope and vandalize is another and another. As long as you don't get caught with your pants down by the cops, or get raided by chance, the odds for anarchy are in your favor in such a place. We understand equally why Rocket wants to get out of the city his own way as much as we understand the wars between the gangs, and this crucial facet makes the film work extraordinarily well to its advantage. Indeed, we understand the tragedies of such minor roles as the Runts- the orphans of the streets- much as we would understand the importance of such roles as in a Dickens novel.
Along with this technique of storytelling, is the way it's filmed that's eye grabbing. The first scene shows in fast action a chicken chase, and then our hero between the gang and the cops viewed in a tailspin fashion as we are sent back to the beginning. Then, we get all the energy of even the simplest of scenes, and the hidden passion (Rocket on the beach with Angelica, for example) all by the mostly hand-held photography by Cesar Charlone, and the break-neck editing (i.e. the montage of how Li'l Ze makes a name for himself, or the disco dance sequence) by Daniel Rezende.