Behind the doors of hell

Rating: 9/10 (3 January 2007)

Fernando Meirelles portrait of gang life, 'City of God', has been likened to Martin Scorcese's 'Goodfellas', but it's far more visceral, and less stylised, than that film, and underpinned by a portrait of the appalling poverty of the Brazillian slums. Fast-paced, superbly acted, uncompromising and without a whiff of glamour, it's a movie that re-invents the tired old gangster genre by actually telling it as it is, and not as the clichés tell us to expect, and a serious piece of social and political history on the side. This is a very fine film, one in which shreds of tattered humanity gleam through the cracks of the doors of hell.