City Of God (Cidade De Deus)

Written by Jon Downs
Published December 17, 2003

Well, i never thought i'd be able to sit through a film that wasn't in English. That has now been proved wrong, however, as this great piece of storytelling is entirely in Portugese, but the subtitles are good (and the film itself is better). Called by some a "Brazilian Goodfellas", this does not do it justice - for example, the craziest gangster in this film is more crazy and ruthless than any Joe Pesci has played. That should give you an inkling of how violent this film is, and it is very violent. There's also alot of drugs-related stuff, seeing as the gangs in the City Of God make their money from selling drugs - why bother with anything more sophisticated when you can rake it in selling heroin and cocaine?. The story itslef mostly follows two boys as they grow up from being young kids in the City Of God, although at the beginning it also follows a few other kids from the same group. I won't spoil the story for you, but the timeline does jump around a bit, a la Pulp Fiction, but here the reason is simply to make sure you are following the story. The crazy kid grows up to become a powerful gangster when he's still a young teenager. He kills off all hs rivals except one, and eventually they both have a massive faceoff. The other main character wants to be a photographer, and his careers gets a big kickstart when he gets forced to take photos of his once-friend's gang, which then accidentally get printed in the newspaper. The film is actually only loosely based on a true story, so not all of the characters and happenings are real. One to watch, as long as you can stomach the violence.

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City Of God (Cidade De Deus)
Published: December 17, 2003
Type:
Section: Video
Filed Under: Video: Drama, Video: Foreign Language, Video: Urban
Writer: Jon Downs
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