It's a grim epitaph for hypocrisy, and the film provides no comfortable answers for solving any of the problems it so well describes.
Most of the supporting characters are vivid and vile, the scariest thing being that they're all young, teens mostly but some as young as eight or ten. "Kill and be respected" is their byword, so they all wield guns from the youngest to the oldest, and bloodshed is their way of life, an accepted behavior. People like Li'l Ze (Leondro Firmino), the drug lord who runs the city; Bene (Phellipe Haagensen), a drug underling; Angelica (Alice Braga), the girl everybody wants; Carrot (Matheus Nachtergale), a rival gangster; and Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge), a peace-loving ex-soldier who becomes a hero in the ghetto when he comes in conflict with Li'l Ze, all contribute to a world we don't want to know about but realize exists everywhere.
"City of God" is not a comfortable picture, but it is an important one. Director Fernando Meirelles and co-director Katia Lund are to be commended for bringing it in on so low a budget yet with such flavor and vitality, varying their cinematic technique almost from shot to shot in creating an unforgettable portrait of a despicable existence, where drugs are everywhere and children murder one another with abandon. The movie will not be everyone's idea of a good time, but given a chance, the movie cannot be ignored.
Video:
Because the film was made on a low budget and was meant to look in part like documentary footage, the image quality of the DVD transfer is probably as good as its theatrical-exhibition appearance. The 1.85:1 screen dimensions here show up as approximately 1.75:1 across a standard television, and the anamorphic rendering helps to ensure that the director's intentions are upheld. Still, the picture is dark, glassy, and somewhat blurred most of the time. Colors are generally vivid, but nothing is too well defined. The general murkiness of the video is not much different from a typical cable TV broadcast, but, then, it wasn't meant to be.
Audio:
The movie's Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is much better than its video, with a strong, wide, dynamic impact in the front channels and good, discrete channel separation in the surrounds. All of the channels are well utilized, in fact, with bullets flying from all angles; and not just from the front and rear, but from points in between as well. It's all very dramatic as well as adding to the verisimilitude of the goings on.
Extras:
The disc only includes one important bonus item, the fifty-six minute documentary, "News From a Personal War," but it's enough to confirm that everything in the film really happened and pretty much in exactly the way depicted. The documentary is a bleak reminder of man's failure to care overmuch for his fellow man, showing us the real-life problems in Rio with drugs corrupting everyone everywhere--the rich, the poor, the government, and the police alike. The disc also includes some Sneak Peeks at other Miramax releases and twenty-five scene selections. The only spoken language available is the film's original Brazilian Portuguese, but subtitles are provided in English, French, and Spanish, with English captions for the hearing impaired. Unfortunately, the English subtitles sometimes whiz by so quickly they're hard to follow without missing some of the action on screen, so the pause and back buttons on the remote come in handy. Moreover, the spelling and grammar of the subtitles aren't always correct, adding further distractions.
Parting Thoughts:
Clearly, "City of God" is meant as a wake-up call to people everywhere, because we can see that crime and corruption are prevalent everywhere. But the frustration is that so long as people look the other way, sweep things under the rug, or, worse, go along with and profit by perversity, the killing will never stop. It's a grim epitaph for hypocrisy, and the film provides no comfortable answers for solving any of the problems it so well describes.
"City of God" is not a comfortable picture, but it is an important one. Director Fernando Meirelles and co-director Katia Lund are to be commended for bringing it in on so low a budget yet with such flavor and vitality, varying their cinematic technique almost from shot to shot in creating an unforgettable portrait of a despicable existence, where drugs are everywhere and children murder one another with abandon. The movie will not be everyone's idea of a good time, but given a chance, the movie cannot be ignored.
Video:
Because the film was made on a low budget and was meant to look in part like documentary footage, the image quality of the DVD transfer is probably as good as its theatrical-exhibition appearance. The 1.85:1 screen dimensions here show up as approximately 1.75:1 across a standard television, and the anamorphic rendering helps to ensure that the director's intentions are upheld. Still, the picture is dark, glassy, and somewhat blurred most of the time. Colors are generally vivid, but nothing is too well defined. The general murkiness of the video is not much different from a typical cable TV broadcast, but, then, it wasn't meant to be.
Audio:
The movie's Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is much better than its video, with a strong, wide, dynamic impact in the front channels and good, discrete channel separation in the surrounds. All of the channels are well utilized, in fact, with bullets flying from all angles; and not just from the front and rear, but from points in between as well. It's all very dramatic as well as adding to the verisimilitude of the goings on.
Extras:
The disc only includes one important bonus item, the fifty-six minute documentary, "News From a Personal War," but it's enough to confirm that everything in the film really happened and pretty much in exactly the way depicted. The documentary is a bleak reminder of man's failure to care overmuch for his fellow man, showing us the real-life problems in Rio with drugs corrupting everyone everywhere--the rich, the poor, the government, and the police alike. The disc also includes some Sneak Peeks at other Miramax releases and twenty-five scene selections. The only spoken language available is the film's original Brazilian Portuguese, but subtitles are provided in English, French, and Spanish, with English captions for the hearing impaired. Unfortunately, the English subtitles sometimes whiz by so quickly they're hard to follow without missing some of the action on screen, so the pause and back buttons on the remote come in handy. Moreover, the spelling and grammar of the subtitles aren't always correct, adding further distractions.
Parting Thoughts:
Clearly, "City of God" is meant as a wake-up call to people everywhere, because we can see that crime and corruption are prevalent everywhere. But the frustration is that so long as people look the other way, sweep things under the rug, or, worse, go along with and profit by perversity, the killing will never stop. It's a grim epitaph for hypocrisy, and the film provides no comfortable answers for solving any of the problems it so well describes.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]11539[/release]