Crime doesn't pay for anyone

Rating: 5/10 (10 August 2013)

City of God is a movie about the idea that crime doesn't pay for anyone. It goes about demonstrating this idea by showing a succession of people trying to take over the ghetto with violence. Some of the candidates are kind-hearted Robin Hoods (Tender Trio), some are accidental gangsters (Knockout Ted), some are simply evil (Lil'Z) and some are a bunch of prepubescent kids (Runts). They all use violence to pursue crime. They all fail. Even as the Runts seem to rule the day at the end, having killed Lil'Z, you know things can change tomorrow (they're like, 10 years old). These four external plots are joined by an internal plot of our protagonist, Rocket, successfully avoiding a life of crime by luck and some fortitude.
The movie seems to want to be more than an episodic chorus of violence. It strains to show that the ghetto and a broken system makes crime and criminality inevitable. It shows this mainly through the reluctant criminal of Knockout Ted who is basically forced to become a gangster after trying to live virtuously. But this idea is relegated to secondary importance for me: much of the violence is glorified, and our hero does escape a life of crime (even though he is no where near as virtuous as Ted was), providing contrary evidence to the idea that crime is inevitable.
A change of protagonist from Rocket into Knockout Ted might have gotten this movie onto this bigger idea.
That's not to say the movie doesn't have some pretty memorable scenes, locations and the fact that it's a Brazilian production based on true characters is pretty awesome. I just think it could have mixed its potent ingredients together towards a bigger idea.
My Story Chart of the movie is at storycharts.ca.