Finally, Roger Ebert gets one right

Rating: 10/10 (21 April 2003)

What an incredible film! Recently, when Roger Ebert was praising this to the high heavens, I had to wonder--lately he seems to be awfully full of gushing hyperbole (_The Hunted_ was "a pure and inspire chase film"--did he see the same crapfest I wasted my money on?). But _City of God_ is actually worthy of the acclaim. This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time and it does very well what you want the best films to do--take you someplace you've never been before, someplace you couldn't go even if you wanted to. Sure, it is a violent film, but no more violent than something like _Gangs of New York_, and the violence here is all to a purpose--showing what happens to gang kids who grow up without any chance, without any guidance. The film is closer to something like _Goodfellas_ anyway, in showing the rise and fall of a gangster, and showing the development of a gangster culture, from the 60s into the 70s, as the relatively innocent marijuana business gives way to the more profitable and violent cocaine trade. The film is almost Dickensian in showing how a place affects the people who live there, and while it calls for change, it never does so in a preachy way. This is just an amazing, vivid, astonishing experience and you owe it to yourself to see this film in a theater if you can, on video otherwise.