Gangs of Brazil: the only movie of 2002

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2003)

Battle of Algiers was great the way this movie is great.

I don't know how this movie could be put down except by people who feel guilt in their pleasure watching the movie and think they must feel offended by it and take a stance against it.
But, I saw the movie with great funny subtitles, and if the original Brazilian movie isn't as funny when it's supposed to be, so be it. you got me.
Without the humor to relieve the tension, this movie is just a cruelly violent movie with heavy social themes--still the only movie of 2002.

Someone told me how 911 hysteria was nothing compared to how f@#$ed up everyday fear is down south, so throwing its nytimes review aside without even reading it, I headed for an incredible freefall into Brazilian ghetto violence.
To say that the movie lacks human dimensions is completely asinine and totally misses the point that the movie makes:
for drugged street kids forgotten by the government and living under the rule of the strongest, no mouth speaks louder than that of the gun.

It's horrifying, yet not surprising that every argument among these children ends with a gunshot.
If the movie is upbeat and mistaken for glamorizing violence it has successfully captured a wider audience to tell the more important fact:
behind every bullet lies a tragedy.
If you're not interested in foreign affairs, go watch Bowling for Columbine.

If you don't like watching movies with serious themes, go watch Kangaroo Jack, National Security, Lord of the Rings, Just Married, A Guy Thing, Catch me if you can, Two Weeks Notice, Gangs of New York, About Schmidt, Maid in Manhattan, Drumline, Antwone Fisher,
keep paying your dollar to teeniebop movie producing Hollywood so that it may afford to release more foreign and independent movies I want to watch.