Directed by:
José PadilhaCinematography:
Lula CarvalhoComposer:
Pedro BromfmanCast:
Wagner Moura, André Ramiro, Caio Junqueira, Milhem Cortaz, Fernanda Machado, Maria Ribeiro, Paulo Vilela, Fernanda de Freitas, Fábio Lago, Otto Jr. (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
Thriller that follows an elite police battalion (BOPE) tasked with cleaning up a drug-ridden Rio de Janeiro slum in advance of the pope's 1997 visit. A team of trained killers, they struggle to do what's right in a corrupt system and dangerous neighborhood. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (9)
I won't deny that in the first half of the film I was still about two minutes ahead of the scene playing out and it was getting on my nerves a bit. The cinematography was confusing with its disjointedness, the frantic and not-so-skillfully strung together editing, the nonsensical voiceover, the confused characters and timelines, and especially the lack of any memorable scene sure did their part. However, in the second half there is brilliant, severely incorrect, brutal, and escalating violence.
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Every couple of years me and some Brazilian movie’s paths cross. And every couple of years it’s a movie that is only hard to forget. This year Tropa de Elite was released. A picture that went perhaps too far in terms of authenticity and intensity of experience. The type of movie that you wouldn’t expect from a western production. Each part is about something else a little differently. Power abusing special units, corrupt police, a hopeless social situation in the slums, politics, the system, society and unit training. All of this throughout the movie will drain you to the core, something that is amply helped by the à la Greengrass documentary style. Despite all the strong aspects of the movie, especially in the second half is the best (or worst, depending) thing about it is Matias’ transformation. It sends shivers down the spine. The negatives here are just purely personal things. Like for instance, Matias’ glasses seem a little out of place in the elite unit, and also the fact that the unit members didn’t cover their faces (EDIT a little later: after watching the documentaries Favela Rising and Bus 174, I take these naive objections back). It’s a powerful movie. Even exceptional. But in no way “nice". Good? Bad? Oh come on, those are long since obsolete terms. No hope, no illusions, no good feelings; pure depression. That is what Tropa de Elite will leave behind in you. For a long, long time.
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Considerably weaker than City of God, but still a drama of immense power. The worst is that we are forced to watch hell on earth through the eyes of the cruellest policeman ever, whose actions become increasingly disgusting as the story progresses, but at the same time we understand more and more that there is no other way. Whether it's the torture and shooting of dealers or the incredibly tough military training, which at one point is really hard to follow, in any case, José Padilha has achieved his goal of presenting us with a society so bleakly devastated and corrupted on both sides of the law that I will never forget it.
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If the entire film was only about the training of the new members of the “elite squad”, the only thing that would bother me would be the ideological aftertaste left by almost every scene. But Elite Squad has many more things that bothered me: there isn’t a lot of action, and when there is some, it’s not very clear, half the scenes are pointless, the subplots are uninteresting, the script goes nowhere and there are many ugly male characters that (other than the main trio) I could never tell apart. To tell you the truth, after half an hour I was already looking forward to the end (and I kept on looking forward until the end).
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Elite Squad wants to shock and awe, but it lacks the better expressive devices, emotion and directorial virtuosity of the makers of City of God – which it so closely resembles at first glance with its volatile cinematography, raw tone and choppy editing. Unfortunately, the story is about nothing and the characters don't win you over one bit, after an hour you're actually just waiting for everyone to get shot in a shouted and eclectic jumble to keep the peace.
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