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copyright ©1999-2005
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
In a favela (ghetto) on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, constructed by
the city government to keep the poor isolated and out of sight from the
wealthier denizens of city center, two young boys, Rocket and L'il Dice,
grow up in the same slum but take very different paths. The story begins
in the 1960s, when Rocket's and L'il Dice's older brothers join up with
a third friend to form a small gang -- partly out of boredom, partly out
of brotherhood, partly out of a way to survive. They call themselves the
Tender Trio, and they're the envy of all the younger boys in the slum.
Still, though they fancy themselves bad to the bone, their crimes are
relatively small-time. Until the night they break into a brothel with
the intent to steal some money. It's a plan hatched by L'il Dice, who
has gang ambitions of his own, and things go horribly awry. The three
flee back to the ghetto with the cops on their tail, convinced that L'il
Dice, who they'd commanded to stay back as lookout, has already been
nabbed. As it turns out, L'il Dice is the real badass amongst them, and
his betrayal of the trio on that night marks the end of the original
gang, and the beginning of L'il Dice's own ascent in the criminal life.
Rocket, meanwhile, stays firmly on the fringes of gang life. He's the
smart one, the sensitive one; at an early age, his gangster brother
makes him promise to stay away from his gun and find a real way out of
this life. As he grows up, Rocket stays friends with the neighborhood's
many gangsters, hanging out with the crowd, buying pot from their
dealers. But Rocket never gets involved in the darker dealings, the
ruthless drug business takeovers and brutal bloody murders; he just
watches from the sidelines without ever judging. It's this penchant for
watching that leads Rocket to pick up a camera for the first time, and
he soon begins dreaming of becoming a photojournalist. Meanwhile, L'il
Dice, now reborn as L'il Ze, has risen to the very top of favela social
hierarchy and become the most powerful gang lord in the city.
Review
Barring the obvious subtitles, City of God doesn't feel anything
like the artsy little foreign flick I was expecting when I added it to
my DVD rental queue without knowing all that much about it, except that
it was supposed to be good. Yes, City of God is very good indeed,
fantastic in fact; this is the kind of movie that has you glued to its
story the whole time you're watching it unfold onscreen, and lingers in
your mind long afterwards. It's big and bold, a real epic, with a
sweeping story arc and rich character development that gets you deeply
involved with what's happening to the individual protagonists, even as
you get the sense that this story stands for something greater than just
a story about a couple of kids from the streets. Stylistically, too, the
movie knocks you out. It uses shaky handheld camerawork the way it's
meant to be used, not just for cool cred but to create a genuine sense
of gritty realism; this, combined with the very funky Brazilian
samba-soul soundtrack, plunges the viewer straight into the streets of
60s-70s Rio de Janeiro. City of God has been described as a sort
of Goodfellas set in Brazil, and in scope, theme and storytelling
flair, it's a good comparison. But City of God is also unlike any
other movie you've ever seen, providing a riveting glimpse into a world
that your average American is unlikely to ever encounter, even if you
should be so lucky as to have the opportunity to travel to Rio itself. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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