The original title of the film is Cidade de Deus.
Good movie but a little hyped I think. Reading subtitles really takes away from the immersiveness but apart from that there wasn’t much character development, so I never got emotionally attached to anything except of course a few brutal scenes. Totally get the dire situation these kids are in. :( It’s hard not to compare parts of this to the wire, and I found that to be a more enjoyable.
As if Martin Scorsese directed GoodFellas in Brazil (and as a fan of both Scorsese and the film, I mean that in the best possible way).
This movie is so raw! A must see!
Brilliant! An incredibly absorbing journey through life in Rio de Janeiro's favelas. The way the story is told makes for such a gripping watching experience. The vibrancy and intensity of these communities shines through in the images and pacing of the film. Loved every minute, even if some parts were really really shocking.
9/10
One of my favourite movies gripping story with harsh reality.
City of god, is an outstanding production. It's a plot that merge the viewer into a reality that i lived when i was young. It's not a happy ending story, because portraits the cruel reality of Brasil.
A must see în my point of view!
Probably the best brazilian movie ever
Possibly the best movie I've ever seen in other language.
image and sound 4.5/5. That style story goodfellas, that good script and editing
City of God is a gripping visceral experience of a film that puts American gangster films to shame.
It's at time documentary like portrayal of the intersecting lives of Rocket, Li'l Ze, Carrot, Benny growing up in the cycle of violence and demonstrates in a perfection of the format the way there is no escape from this world.
Fernando Meirelles eye in this film is both stunning and shocking at times I both wanted to but couldn't look away. The use of perspective in peculator was beautiful and entraining and this was often very successfully with use of reflections, from the scenes and in the glistening bodies of the actors.
This was undoubtedly a 5 star film and i am eager to re-watch to deepen my understanding.
We are watching a movie, but unfortunately this is reality. We will turn off the TV but people will still die.
Wow. Just wow. This movie was absolutely brilliant! It perfectly showed the endless cycle of death and violence in the ghetto/slums, and it did it in a way that I have never seen before.
Good movie with a lot of violence, but that’s to be expected. I know that it is based on a true story, but the way that all of this is shot make it feel even more like a documentary to me, which is a good thing.
One of if not the best foreign movie I've ever watched. I'd put this up on the pedestal right next to Goodfellas. The cinematography is top tier.
Some of my favorite scenes -
The club scene when the lights start flashing
The face off at the end with how the camera pans between Rocket, the gang and the police
Hand or foot
The epic story is told in such detail and shot masterfully that it totally immerses you in the tradegy of having lived through those time in Rio. The magnum opus in masterful storytelling.
What a bunch of savages. Burn that neighborhood to the ground.
A hauntingly real dive into Rio's seedy side, exploring the turf wars and drug scene of the city's worst neighborhood during the culture-rich 1970s. Beginning with an uncomfortably close look at their hopeless childhood living conditions, we see how, for many of these kids, guns and violence are literally their only chance at getting a leg up on life.
Not that they're all sympathetic victims, either: some people are just born bad. Most of them, actually, seem to prefer a short career of quick gains and tragic ends. Why slave away for fifty years, selling fish out of a rickety old cart like your parents, when you can just live fast and die young? Take the eventual warlord Li'l Dice/Li'l Z for example: a malicious orphan who discards his older friends' warnings and cuts a violent swath through the city, thugs and innocents alike, before he's old enough to shave. His brand of me-first barbarism spreads through the community like a plague, spawning countless imitators while earning fear and respect in equal measures.
Even the kids who try to make good, like the conflicted narrating photographer Rocket, dip their fingers into that drug-fueled honey jar when life gets tough. It's inescapable and, for a while, it all works out. The gangs enforce their own rules, a strict code that effectively eliminates random crime and establishes a sense of predictable normalcy for the unconnected population. It can't last forever, and it doesn't (there's an intense, if fleeting, power vacuum after the two bigwigs finally settle their score), but for a time that senseless chaos somehow produces its own twisted sense of order.
Cruel and unflinching, with an appropriately frantic visual character, City of God swings with power. It'll touch you and hurt you, attract and repulse, and ultimately stick in your gut for days.
Excellent movie, extremely violent but that is what happens at favelas.
Great movie 8.2/10
Absolutely incredibile! 9,5/0!
Very hard movie, because you don't expect it. nothin' could be closer to the real world than this one.
6/10
Everyone should watch this film.
Shout by KaskelhoffBlockedParent2017-08-03T22:49:22Z
Definitely one of the most explosive, and gripping films ever made. That moment, when a youngster realizes, that only chance for survival is crime..well that moment defines pretty much everything that is wrong with this world. As a man living in a welfare state, this kind of reality feels unbearable.