City Of God
The movie is staged in the slums of Brazil where there is uprising of rivalry between two drug barons even as a camera man captures the whole event.
15 April 1983, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
1976, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1984, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
18 December 1970, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
23 June 1978, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
27 December 1979, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
3 January 1969, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
September 25, 2010
Each chapter is endowed with powerful, uncompromising, beguiling and, sometimes, deceptive momentum. What seem like innocuous turns become so critical to the narrative that they tie into the ruthless idea at hand: You never see the bullet that kills you.
June 17, 2009
City of God delivers a bruising, visceral experience of the vicious spiral of violence that draws kids into a life of crime, brutality and murder as the only avenue open to them.
March 20, 2003
Hard to watch but even harder to tear your eyes away from.
December 31, 2009
Brazillian director Mereilles' splashy feature debut, a dynamically exciting portrait of Rio's violent gangs, immediately established himsef as an international talent to watch, and the Oscar nods only reaffirmed that status.
November 08, 2011
Another passionate piece of Latin American filmmaking, which documents a tragic period in Rio's history and highlights the horrors of life in poverty-line communities. Technically a remarkable filmmaking achievement too.
November 08, 2011
I came away from this film impressed by its narrative control but unmoved by anything it had to say.
June 24, 2006
The performances, many from non-pros, are terrific.
December 22, 2010
Powerful, but only for 17 and up.
November 12, 2008
The visceral and artistic excitement remains surface-bound.
March 11, 2004
The living conditions it projects are as horrendous as I had feared, but the movie is surprisingly easy to take as a rollicking homicidal entertainment.
June 12, 2009
Fernando Meirelles' Brazilian slum epic is a profound, stylistically expansive depiction of three decades of child gang warfare on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro with non-actors playing their poverty-ridden lives for the camera.
May 19, 2004
Difficult to watch but hard to look away from.
