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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Rio de Janeiro isn’t just a sunny city with Jesus standing on a hill. The slums are overflowing with drugs (and trash), and cops’ pockets with money. Because the men from BOPE are here, doing what is necessary, using whatever means necessary. The direction is marvelous, visually inventive and the screenplay develops on several ideas with huge social implications at once. Whether suffocation by plastic bag or fighting against the system (while still keeping your job), it always hits a nerve. So where would you like to go on holiday? To Rio?
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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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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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I did not find any exorbitant political incorrectness in Elite Squad. The film provides no instant solutions to a sad situation, nothing gives hope, and if it does provide something, then it is a rather appalling picture of decaying justice and its humiliated servants. Personally, I was quite convinced by invectives toward left-wing intellectuals from good families, and I was able to identify with Captain Nascimento's views, although the depicted effects of the Crusades on justice evoke appalling feelings. What I really like about the film and find healthily provocative is the fact that the operation in the slums is initiated by the Pope's visit. This strange virtual detachment of civilization from the devastated world of slums and the effort to seek in it a kind of nobility of poverty contrasts well with the aspect of the glued and formatted "black" brains from BOPE. We can argue about where the truth is, but the fact remains that Padilha does not offer any. And if it is on the side of brutality of the men of the law, from my point of view, it does so because a) I am able to identify with it, b) even if I did not identify with it, it is still an aspect I want to know about. BTW, the film is technically brilliant.
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