Review of City of God (2002) by Ahmedaiman9999 — 19 Sep 2018

Superb editing, and Fernando Meirelles splashy direction made this movie visually stunning, and this was necessary. Because without being so, City of God wouldn't have been the easiest hard-to-watch movie to be watched! I know that sounds weird, but I'm not kidding this movie is so disturbing and shocking, but its vibrant visual style made it impossible to look away from.

Like the visuals and colors, the soundtrack is so vivid and dynamic to mirror the vicious cycle of violence in the eponymous city, and the slums of Rio de Janiero.

That being said, City of God's exhilarating visuals and soundtrack aren't the only, nor even the main two reasons that made it unbelievably engrossing. As what really dazzled me the most this masterpiece is its narrative control. Considering the fact that this movie has this abundance of characters, which all of them are almost equally important, and a non-linear storytelling, it's beyond belief that I haven't felt lost even for a moment. Instead, I found myself caring for each of the main characters for equal measure. Every time our protagonist, Rocket mentions one of the new important characters while narrating the story, I start getting worried a bit because I think this would harm the narrative thread of the story, and make it lose its balance a bit. But every time I ended up being totally wrong till I eventually said to myself: "More characters, please!" By the way, the use of voice-over narration in this movie is exceptional!

Every single character is as grounded as its compelling and throughly interesting. And they are brought to life by some of the most authentic, honest, and uncompromising performances I've ever seen in film. All the non-pros actors delivered downright terrific performances that I really can't single hand one of them.

The only issue I've with City of God is its first fast-paced 20 minutes. Putting aside the magnificent opening scene, everything in the rest of the first fifty to twenty minutes happens very quickly that kept me from being engaged from the start.

Powerful, visceral, uncompromising, yet honest, Cidade de Deus is a Latin masterpiece, and easily one of the this century's best movies, so far.