Visceral and Fabulous

Rating: 10/10 (29 April 2005)

"City of God" is an adrenaline jolt of a film that for once manages to find a balance between stylistics and substance. The director, Fernando Meirelles, stuffs his movie to the brim with machine-gun editing, swirling cinematography and pounding music, but while this reliance on fancy tricks has ruined other films, Meirelles is so expert at blending them seamlessly into an engrossing story that the viewer quickly accepts them as inseparable from the world of the film. He delivers a deeply emotional and human story that obviously owes much to Scorsese and Tarantino---but his movie feels completely original, never like a rip off. And underneath all of the action and plotting, there is a compelling message about about the power of art (specifically the camera) and a suggestion that, just as the pen is mightier than the sword, the camera is mightier than the gun. Can't recommend it enough.
Grade: A+