Realistic and honest

Rating: 9/10 (30 November 2015)

City of God captures the brutal life that is lived in the hoods of Brazil. From the beginning of Rockets flashbacks, you see the poverty that surrounds everyone; the small shorts worn with shirts that barely cover their stomachs or don't even have a shirt, the small houses crammed together that are falling apart, rusted old cars, and the run down shops shape the poverty of the town. There were only two ways to get out of it. One, leave the City Of God, but that's virtually impossible, as seen when Benny was preparing to leave but was shot. The other way, become part of the drug world and get to the the top. This is what Lil' Ze did, and what all children aspire to do. Ze, like many other boys, saw how violence and drugs would give people 'great' lives from a young age. Ze demonstrates how this lifestyle of a drug dealer ultimately is not your rise, but actually your fall. He was born in violence and died in violence. But the brutally honest part isn't in the amount of violence seen throughout the entire movie, it is the last scene that truly captures the horrors of the City of God. The kids that killed Ze, were now 'in charge' of the business that all kids want to be in, and as they walk away with guns in their hands talking about making a blacklist of all the people they are going to kill, you realize that this vicious cycle never ends. History will keep repeating itself over and over again with the next generation, and unless you have greater dreams in life like Rocket, you will become what everyone does, a drug consumed man controlled by violence.