A very good film, if a little stylised.

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2003)

City of God is a film set, appropriately enough, in the slums called the 'City of God'. It revolves around a variety of characters but centrally around Rocket - a young black guy who wants to become a photographer whilst also staying out of the various gangs in the neighbourhood. Also central are Little Ze and Bene, with various other gang lords appearing. The film follows a timeline from Rocket's childhood to the present day.
The film starts at the very present with our hero in grave danger (always a good way to start a film) and then proceeds as one huge flashback explaining how he got there, with the final 10 minutes acting out what happened from that moment onwards. As mentioned above the flashbacks start in his childhood and this seemed a good place to start, explaining why he grew up as he did and what happened on the way.
To be perfectly honest, given that everything is building up to the present moment there's not a huge amount to say on the plot, given that it's a film set in an extremely violent part of a city with drug dealing and gang violence, work it out for yourself - as they say.
What does lift the film is the characters and their movements. The central characters are given (just) enough time to expand into useful roles and to interact, though possibly cutting one or two people or scenes to allow the main characters more time would have been good. Even so, their physical and emotional interplay is excellent and does provide the core of the film. There are also some fantastic scenes especially the Hand/Foot scene that has some of the best child acting that I have ever seen.
With reference to the technicalities, the direction was confident and made good use of lighting, the alleyways of the City and the larger areas. If I do have a criticism, it's that sometimes the film felt a little stylised - i.e. making use of freeze frames, etc that didn't really add to the film. To be fair, at other times these tricks did add a little, but I'm not sure overall if the film really needed them.
Finally then, it's a very good film that should be seen at the cinema. It's not going to change your life, but on the other hand it'll probably make you think for a while, and that's a good second. 8/10. :)