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City of God Customer Reviews (13 - 15 of 51 Reviews)

City of God, The Joe Martin review
City of God is the film equivalent of being hit in the head with a sledghammer. From its opening sequence involving a fast paced chase scene between a chicken and and dozens of gun toting teenagers and children to its blood soaked ending this movie grabs you immediately and doesnt release its hold for even one moment.
You become immersed in the characters and the irony of the film in my opinion is that even the worste characters inspire pity rather than anger or dislike as is exemplified by the scene where Ze Pequeno kneels over the body of his murdered friend, crying and inefectually shoots his pistol into the air. It is his conditioned response to everything. But we, as he, realize you cant shoot someone back to life.
Products of their environment and desensitized to violence to such a level, that when one of the main characters brother's dies we see that he is less concerned with the death of his brother and more interested in the camera somone is using to take pictures of the dead body. These children have seen it all by a very young age.
The violence in this movie is chilling. Although disgusting we realize it is central to the theme and necessary to the plot.

See this movie. It is quite simply unbelievable.

Read subtitles and see violence
This is a foreign film, so I had to read subtiles throughout the entire film. The film looks at the life story of boy living in a gang infested neighborhood somewhere near Rio. The film depecits bloody, evil acts of violence in the context of gang members' desires to gain and exert power over others or to simply get revenge. Even the police are corrupted by the quick, easy money. Of course its only quick and easy if you live long enough to spend it. The boy's father understands this and convinces the boy not to become a criminal. However, about half of the people on his street including his friends and older brother are gangsters, so life gets complicated. Perhaps the theme of the movie is that one has to start at the bottom and earn their success through experience and new ideas (even if one is a gangster). The pace is decent. However, this film should be avoid by people who don't like the sight of blood, violence, brief nudity, brief sex, foul language, acts of evil, or reading subtitles.

Brutal but Brilliant.
Cidade de Deus (City of God) is a vicious and simply inspiring film about the slum 'City of God' in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It weaves the stories of many memorable characters such as Benny, Carrot, Knockout Ned and many more. However, its main focuses are the narrator, Rocket who informs the viewer of the inhabitants of the slum while telling his story and L'il Ze, the infamous and cruel leader of the slum.

Pros:
The great point about this film is the pure and emotionally charged feelings that the actors display especially Rocket and L'il Ze. I never knew that most actors here were non-professional but judging from their performances who cares? They could easily beat a Shakespearian actor in terms of intensity and ability.

It is also an original film in terms of camera shots and how the film was paced. It could have been turned into a pretentious documentary about the slums of Rio de Janeiro but didn't and stayed to true to what it was trying to perceive. I could in no way relate with the characters but that didn't stop me adoring the characters and their personalities.

Cons: None at all. Every film should have a flaw but this one just doesn't. Every aspect of the film was superb from the acting to the soundtrack.

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