A raw depiction of Rio De Janero's slums

Rating: 6/10 (7 October 2019)

SPOILER ALERT
This movie was a very disturbing movie, but cinematically was a stroke of genius. The opening scene of the movie is the sharpening of the knife, which is a great show of mise-en-scene. The placement of the knife in the beginning foreshadows the incredible amount of violence depicted in this movie. We see a scene in the beginning of the movie that is actually in the middle of the plot line; this scene is when Rocket grabs the chicken in the middle of the road and is stuck in between the gang lords and the cops. They show this with a revolving camera to show all sides from Rocket's perspective. This scene was a pivotal moment as after this, the story went back a couple years to explain how Rocket ended up in this predicament. The movie brings light to favelas in the poverty stricken area of Rio de Janeiro where drug lords run rampant. We saw the use of the handheld camera and dolly shots in scenes involving running to make us feel as if we were also running for our lives. Due to rocket being a photographer at the end of some scenes they would take snapshots making it feel like we are trying to preserve a memory when doing this. This also puts emphasis on these scenes letting the audience know that these are important moments for Rocket. When these snapshots are taken the sound of a camera came into play making it a non-diegetic sound as it is not part of the films narrative. We also see offscreen sounds when gunshots occur that don't happen on screen, but we know it has happened somewhere in the vicinity of what we see in the film. Music was also used as a cinematic theme to help paint a picture of the Brazilian culture as well as the timing of the movie. This movie is set in 1970's Brazil, so this is seen with the fast paced rhythm in the music which also shows the fast paced life in drug dealing. Although this depiction of the favelas in Brazil in the 70's is probably accurate, I find the movie to be extremely violent and disturbing. It was hard to stomach watching children shoot others and children being shot.