City of God is a cinematic masterpeice

Rating: 10/10 (7 October 2019)

City of God (2002), directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund is a cinematic masterpiece. The movie is a Portuguese language film with English subtitles. The cinematographer (Caesar Charlone) uses many handheld scenes from main actor and narrator Rocket (played by Alexandre Rodrigues and Luis Otavio) who is trying to choosing to become a photographer and not the life of crime and violence to action scenes, crane shots, low and high angles. The film depicts life in the gang filled slums of Rio de Janeiro barrio tackling poverty and despair with the innocence of children into crime. There are great editing (Daniel Rezende) and flashback scenes from unrest in the 1960's to when the movie was being set in the 70's and all flashbacks. The opening scene is fast paced editing leaving the audience in suspense of the choice of gang life, leaving to be better, or die in the gang infested streets. The actors and film location have many violent criminal scenes involving children and adolescents committing robberies, drugs, and murders. The mise-en-scene uses authentic street location the sounds of the city, natural light, along the use of blue colors to represent cold (death) and flashbacks in a yellow (hope) to represent warm. City of God gives it audience an inside look of gang life, poverty, corruption, violence, and greed.
City of God is a critically acclaimed film nominated in four academy awards categories for directing, adaption, cinematography, editing. I give the movie 10/10 for the story line, lighting, music, narration, cinematography, editing, directing, and acting.