hyperviolence stylized and glorified

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2017)

I live in one of the top 10 most violent cities in the world. After Living just a few miles away from one of the thousands of Latin America ghettos, i find that the story portrayed in this film is nothing new, shocking or amazing.. it has been going on, over and over again for decades...Teenage gangsters and hit men, pregnant teens, drug cartels, turf killings, high unemployment, corruption, YAWN... tell me another story.
Having also lived most of my life in the US suburbs, I can also see why first world inhabitants were fascinated with this movie, as it presents a sanitized version of reality, where we don't see the aftermath of the violence presented in this movie, and it glorifies third world poverty in a slick and glamorous Tarantino-like way. Countless of dead people are just an afterthought presented in this masterfully edited and photographed film. To the casual viewer in Europe or the US, it all seems so wild and cool, so detached, and exotic, but so far away... and of course the effect this film has, would not not quite be the same if all of its audience actually lived in or near any slum like the one displayed in this film. We see a never-ending stream of dead people, but we never see the grief of those who are still left alive to mourn them, etc etc.
It is no wonder that the exporters of glorified capitalist propaganda (Hollywood) were quick to nominate this movie to the Oscars, as it is one of the most cleverly packaged turds (storywise) ever made, complete with the usual neoliberal propaganda of multiculturalism, race mixing and white women throwing themselves to black men and boys.
In the decade+ after this movie was made, countless movies and slick TV series have been made depicting Latin America gangsters and ghettos, and it is getting old and tired.
If you take away the sheen, the music and the quick editing from this movie, and you are left with another boring third world ghetto story, full of clichéd kiddie characters, devoid of any humanity; killing each other for no good reason and a pathetic story that goes nowhere.
Of course the movie has a few good moments where humanity seems to come through, but they get quickly railroaded behind the director's obsession with making another pointlessly violent Tarantino ripoff movie.