A fascinating snapshot of urban and social disintegration

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2008)

City Of God (2003)
Top 5 - 2003
Number 1 2003 - Film In A Foreign Language
Fight and you'll never survive..... Run and you'll never escape.
THIS FILM IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY
With its compelling direction, stunning cinematography and editing, 'City Of God' comes at you with its fearless pace and attitude, it makes it hard to forget easily.
Like Sergio Leone's breathtaking, operatic 'Once Upon A Time In America' was a harrowing story about 4 friends in the Jewish Ghetto of New York over a few decades, 'City of God' is similar, but in a less romantic, harsher and more brutal environment - It follows the lives of a group of friends in a favela of Rio De Janeiro.
The film jumps back and forth, in sort of chapters, following the inextricable involvement of a group of friends with crime and drug dealing. In City of God you have little choice. A place where politicians turn a blind eye on, there's barely any electricity, any essential supplies. The place will beat you to the ground unless you do something. 15 miles from the heavenly beaches and green hills of Rio, this urban hell is something horrifyingly depressing.
This is the one of the very few crime dramas of a respectable calibre that show us the problems in other parts of the world. How we all suffer from such pressing issues. However, don't take 'City Of God' as this epic gangster film. It is also a very personal story about the struggles of one young man trying to escape the brutality of the ghetto and seek a better life, as a photographer.
Impressively shot and often tragic in its profound and explicit nature, 'City of God' is not to be missed.
7/10