Jose Padilha’s 2007 crime film pivots from the ground traversed in the excellent Bus 174 (see comments 3, 4, & 5), turning away from the criminal trapped and interpellated within a rigid, pervasive system of inequality toward cops, just as trapped. The film got a lot of love in Brazil, and certain international festivals, but my plot summary seems more cogent–and a lot more thrilling–than I found the film. I liked its thesis, and disagree entirely with Manohla Dargis’ critique of its politics, even as I fully accept her critique of its aesthetics. It perfectly defines “lugubrious,” trudging through the mechanics of a crime & corruption thriller, without any of the dynamics. And this makes me bring up, for the 100th time?, Fernando Meirelles’ superior (and I think superlative) City of God.
mike, i failed to find a critique of the film’s politics in dargis’ brief capsule review. please to explain.
See, there you have it: lugubrious is a great word.
She pitched it as empty nihilism.
It is a great word.
Yeah, ‘Elite Squad’ is an incoherent mess. I suppose it is meant to be gritty, but it was impossible for me to follow all the characters, and the main plotline — the captain grooming a successor — made no sense whatsoever. I don’t object to empty nihilism (is there any other kind?), but as Mike indicates, that misses the honorable intentions of the movie; it just does deliver on those intentions. There are brief moments when Matias gets to show his ambivalence about the work of the BOPE, but they are overwhelmed by the action.
I’m guessing this is a different Jose Padilha than the one we arrested, drove insane in solitary confinement and then imprisoned for terrorist offenses.