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Welcome to the favelas of Brazil, places where basic
utilities are unreliable or non-existent and police only patrol
in armed platoons—the kinds of places that definitely don’t
show up in any travel brochures. Set during the 1960s, ’70s,
and ’80s, the movie’s drug dealers and petty thieves rise
and fall; only the location remains constant.
The story is told through the eyes of Rocket, who grows from
boy (Otavio) to man (Rodrigues) during the course
of the film. Rocket has enough sense to want a life as a photographer
rather than following in his brother’s footsteps to a life
of petty crime and untimely demise. Rocket watches as his
bloodthirsty peer Li’l Dice (Silva) grows up to be
an even more bloodthirsty young man known as Li’l Ze (Firmino
da Hora). Li’l Ze kills his way to the top of the drug
trade in the ’70s, establishing himself as the de facto leader
of the city. In the last act Li’l Ze antagonizes rival drug
lord Carrot (Nachtergaele) and former soldier Knockout
Ned (Jorge), overextending his resources and starting
a street war with an army of children as the foot soldiers.
Fernando Meirelles is smart enough not to let Rocket’s
story ever eclipse the events taking place in the city. His
cast is handpicked from the children from the favelas and
shot on location with the permission of local community “leaders.”
This helps keep the movie grounded and removes doubt of any
embellishments on the director’s part. The young child actors
play their parts, shooting each other and robbing everyone
else with zeal. When one boy, desperate for gang membership,
proclaims, “I smoke, I snort, I’ve killed and robbed. I’m
a man!” he says it with such conviction that it raises the
question of exactly how much acting is going on. Meirelles
also uses hand-held cameras to keep with that urban feel,
but this trick does not work to the film’s advantage.
Think Goodfellas without the glamour and you have
City Of God. When Li’l Ze is on top of the world as
undisputed king of the city he still doesn’t own a car, can’t
afford to move out, and is unable to operate a camera. Li’l
Ze is very much a star in hell during the idyllic ’70s, but
he, Rocket, and the rest of the characters seem to forget
this. The characters and Li’l Ze especially are at the highest
plane of Dante’s Inferno, preparing to transcend their demonic
origins. When the gang war starts, everyone is snapped back
to the reality that God abandoned this city long ago. The
characters begin their descent into bottomless perdition.
The novelty of the location is only half of the appeal of
City Of God. The other half comes from its large cast
of characters whose stories are inextricably bound to the
city. All walks of life get examined, from lowly street couriers
and drug addicts to the mighty drug kingpins and yes, even
the hopeless innocents who just want to go about their business.
Toward the finale the film treads dangerously close to cliché,
but it only serves to remind us that these sayings bear a
kernel of truth. We are constantly warned of the inescapable
conclusion to a life of crime and Knockout Ned is an embodiment
of a man consumed by rage. In the end the war is over and
a new gang of kids is in charge, but we know that it won’t
be long before another group of still younger children makes
a play for power, creating another chapter in the unending
cycle of violence. City Of God is disturbing, but it
tells a story worth telling, making it easy to recommend and
impossible to forget.
—Woodrow Bogucki
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
