The gangs of Rio

Rating: 8/10 (7 February 2003)

Quentin Tarantino, eat your heart out! At least in this film they outshot you big time. Watching this film is difficult at times. The violence is to such a degree, the viewer has a problem seating through it.
Director Fernando Meirelles has an eye for realism and detail. The most disturbing thing about City of God is the fact that the killers are children playing adult games before they can be children. It is a well known fact that these kids' gangs created terror, not only in the favelas where they lived, which was unfortunate, but they mugged, robbed and just plain terrorized the big cities in Brazil. News about street children being shot in the streets of Rio or Sao Paolo were perceived as criminal because of the ages, but one can get a clearer picture in this film by coming to the realization these same children were killing real grown ups and getting away with murder.
The only problem I had with this film is with the English subtitles. Sometimes, one doesn't know who's who. To make matters worse, the principal character grows from a young boy into a photographer who looks like a small boy himself.
The plots and subplots are somehow hard to follow at times. The great accomplishment for the director is that he never preaches. He shows the world what went on at that particular time. The realism is extended to the way we see in gory details the corpses of the slain gang members. If Hollywood would have presented scenes that are so hard to take as these, many would be criminals would have been able to see first hand what bullets do to human beings: they kill!