Fernando Meirelles’s crime film is frightening, humane and told with exceptional clarity at speed. We recommend it warmly, though the cutting and music sometimes make its violence more exciting than the suffering warrants.
City of God is a forceful, frightening crime film, and we recommend it with one reservation: it sometimes makes the violence too easy to enjoy. Fernando Meirelles follows gang warfare in a Rio favela across decades, showing how quickly children learn what a gun can buy them. Bráulio Mantovani’s screenplay, adapted from Paulo Lins’s novel, has a crowded history to tell. It moves between lives and periods without making us feel we have been handed a list of names to memorise.
The opening chicken chase is a fair warning about how Meirelles intends to proceed. Daniel Rezende cuts it with such speed that a small pursuit becomes an event, and the excitement is inseparable from the threat. His editing remains remarkably clear when the story starts moving backwards and forwards in time; we can follow the connections without having every change laboriously explained. That clarity matters in a film with this many people. It leaves us free to notice behaviour rather than spend the next scene working out where we are.
César Charlone’s location photography keeps us close to the movement through the favela, with a restless camera that can make watching feel precarious. The energy works because we can still follow where people are going. Tulé Peak’s production design makes the neighbourhood feel cramped, with little space for people to escape one another. Antonio Pinto and Ed Cortês supply an energetic score that pushes the action along. Together, the camera, cutting and music occasionally make this violent place feel a little too inviting.
Alexandre Rodrigues is valuable as Buscapé because he gives the film a human scale amid all this activity. Leandro Firmino’s Zé Pequeno is frightening without the dignity that crime films so often grant their powerful men, while Phellipe Haagensen brings welcome warmth to Bené. The performances allow room for humour and tenderness without making the brutality seem less severe. We believe in people who might have had quite ordinary lives, which makes watching them become accustomed to violence harder to bear.
We were horrified by the armed children, because their youth remains so visible even when they are behaving like men who expect obedience. Meirelles does not need to explain what has gone wrong when a boy can command a street with a weapon. The film’s coming-of-age story becomes frightening precisely because we can see what these children are learning. The pace contributes to that fear: violence spreads before anyone has much time to question what they are doing.
The reservation is about how eagerly Meirelles keeps us entertained along the way. A flourish of cutting can arrive before the previous violence has had time to register, and we sometimes wanted the film to stay still with the people it had hurt. Mantovani’s voiceover also supplies emphasis where the images have already done enough. The storytelling is clear, but its insistence on carrying us into the next incident can leave less space for grief or uncertainty than these lives deserve.
Within the gangster film, this is an unusually persuasive account of how early children are drawn into the trade. Its criminals can be funny, sociable and compelling company, and Meirelles understands how that appeal helps violence become familiar. At 129 minutes, the film demands attention without often testing patience, although its relentless pace may exhaust some viewers. See it, but leave time afterwards for something quieter than another crime film.
