City of God.

A difficult film to watch if you speak neither Portuguese nor Spanish. First and foremost, the film is set in Brazil and everything about it is Brazilian so if that is not your cup of tea then no need to read any further.

I appreciate that not everything on this blog will be to your tastes, I try to get a bit of everything on the blog and am constantly looking for new or different things. I would suggest that anyone travelling to Brazil for the Olympics or just because they want to should watch this film as it is very accurate in its portrayal of organised crime and the may other slightly scandalous things that take place on the streets of Brazil.

Normally at this time I would talk about the dialogue and the characters but with a film that I was forced to watch as a silent movie, that gave a gangster feel but at times was still looking for the wow factor that was going to make it the film that everyone remembered, the film that was going to take it to the top of the films about organised crime and it did the best that it could do.

Playing very much on the theme of Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't; City of God depicts very clearly the troubles when growing up around organised crime. Throughout film history we have seen it many times, we have seen the characters that grow up and accept it as part of their lives, aspire to join the gang and get by, make a lot of money and then got shot and we have also seen the people that try to escape from it and never really manage it. This film falls in to the latter category but is more than just an attempt. What makes it different is the innocence of the main character Rocket. A young man that doesn't really understand what he is doing, isn't actually trying to join a gang is something that is rarely seen in the gangster/mob section of the film world. City of God is different and for that it should be respected.