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City of God Customer Reviews (46 - 48 of 51 Reviews)

A True Story Very Well Told
When I decided to watch "Cidade de Deus", I was rather hesitant. Although I had heard positive comments for the film, there were several things that were putting me off: The shoot-em-up story did not sound original, the actors were amateur, the language and location were not so familiar. However I devided to give it a try.

Well, it proved to be a very wise move by my side: "Cidade de Deus" is simply an excellent film. The story might not be that original but is very interesting and very well-told. The "amateur" actors are superb, and perform much better than many professional ones. The language and location may not sound familiar at the beginning, but the masterful director soon gets you quickly entwined with the environment; in fact, he is maybe the greatest asset of this production, as he does an excellent job in providing us with a top-notch direction.

What you see is sometimes so surreal (a poor ghetto community totally isolated from the "normal" parts of Brazil, small children toying with drugs and guns, people showing a complete lack of respect for human life, etc.) that you tend to think it is a bit exaggerated. Sadly, it is not: The story is true, and many if the actors that play in it are actual inhabitants of this kind of ghetto communities. The film should awake many of us who sometimes tend to feel that our comfortable lives are the norm in this world, when in fact they are rather the exception.

Rocket
Stunningly beautiful, hopeful and grim. Leaves an impression, but no impression at all, with characters more often amusing than involving. Given the broad scope of the film, it's no suprise. That and the sometimes nauseating camerawork/editing fail in their plot to ruin this movie in the least. It's fresh and intelligent. The cinematography manages to make this movie probably one of the best looking ever - the ghettos are as beautiful as the "intentionally placed but wholely prosthetic beautiful scenery" in many movies, and the beach scenes transcend beauty, at the same time fake plastic heaven and paradise born to reality. Acting is perfect, maybe reading subtitles diminishes my judgement, but it never once seemed like it was being over/under acted, even acted at all. The story is comprably grand, if not particularly moving, adept in its ability to convey itself, and enough to be entertaining without being too much of a weight upon other aspects of the movie.

See City of God now. Buy it upon release and you probably won't have qualms about rewatching it (probably the biggest benifit of its relative distance emotionally).

Reality vs. Morality
Brilliant movie. It takes the concept of poetic justice towards poignant brutality so brilliantly ridiculous and coincidental that the images will stay with you long after you've seen it.

A lot of films about people living in impoverished environments always tend to allow its characters the luxury to have choices in their lives. In City of God, the paths and conclusion to the lives of the characters weren't mapped out from their choices. They in fact had no choice at all as that was part of the point of the film. The movie revealed that while cinematic or literary mores may constitute fictional characters to make choices in their lives that would bring about change, whether it be positive or negative, in the reality of the lives of the hoodlums in City of God, they really had no choice. Their choices were simply be a criminal or be killed.

That is unfortunately the reality in high risk neighborhoods not just in Brazil but in America and I'm sure anywhere in the world as well. Anyone can say the obvious of spouting out drivel about how a person can overcome great difficulties through the right choices in their life. However, what that well-intentioned but enormously misappropriated statement fails to point out is that it is a rarity and an exception when that does happen.

This is a film that makes good-intentioned morality-rich movies like Boyz N The Hood and Menace to Society seem hokey and forced.

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