City of God

“City of God” takes us to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Based on a true story, the film shows us a dark side of the city Rio de Janeiro. Most of the film takes place in western Rio de Janeiro in Cidade de Deus, which means City of God in Portuguese. This area would be considered the slums. The film is takes us on a journey through the point of view of an actor named Rocket. We watch as Rocket is subjected to crime and poverty as he grows up. Rocket makes friends along the way while trying not to get on the bad side of the crime bosses. Rockets childhood acquaintances Lil Ze and Benny become two of the biggest crime bosses by killing off all the bosses except one. Rocket watches as the one gang left, which is ran by Carrot finds itself at an all out turf war with Lil Ze. Rocket chooses to stay out of gang activity and tries to rise out of the slums by getting a job at the newspaper. This is Rockets big break which takes him farther than he could have imagined.

Violence and Drug use are a huge problem in Rio. Mostly these problems are located in the favelas, which refers to shanty slum areas. As we see in the film there is great majority of youths from these areas that partake in the drugs and the crime. These youth would be considered foot soldiers. Leaders of the gangs have much of their dirty work done by these youths because of lesser penalties. According to the film’s special edition cut, one person dies in Rio de Janeiro every half hour. 90% are shot by large caliber bullets.

A prevalent theme in the movie is the drug use. The gangs in the film see this as their great opportunity to make big money. Drug trafficking employs 100,000 people in Rio de Janeiro, which is also mentioned in the special edition of the DVD. This actually the same number of people that the city has on its payroll. The first Tuesday of every month, the Rio police force brings all there confiscated drugs for the month to a certain junkyard. The drugs are incinerated in a high temperature oven. This takes about two hours to burn them all. The police confiscate on an average between 200 kilos and up to 3 or 4 tons a month in drugs.

I thought the “City of God” was a great movie. Though, I would not recommend to people with weak stomachs. It was a very violent film and had some disturbing scenes. I thought the directors did a great job at capturing the realness of this true story. Though, it is not really a happy story but a story that needed to be told. “City of God” educates the viewer on the ongoing problems that are happening in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The picture that is above this paragraph is a favela neighborhood. I would recommend this film to others in the future.