ELITE SQUAD
Directed by José Padilha
Produced by Padilha, Bráulio Mantovani & Marco Prado
Written by Padilha, Mantovani & Rodrigo Pimentel (from the book by André Batista, Pimentel & Luiz Eduardo Soares)
Released by IFC Films/The Weinstein Company
Portuguese with English subtitles
Brazil.  115 Min. Not Rated
With Wagner Moura, Caio Junquiera, André Ramiro, Maria Ribeiro, Fernanda Machado & Fabio Lago
 

The approach taken by José Padilha in his feature film debut is that of a student of Fernando Meirelles’s smash City of God. It’s all here: the immediacy of the hand-held camerawork and blazing editing; the sudden and harsh bursts of violence; the first-person narration; and the awful poverty of Rio on display. But set a generation later (1997), it takes on another viewpoint: of the supercops assigned to tackle the drug dealers of Rio’s slums.

It’s also, in another sense, like City of God meets Dirty Harry. Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is a take-no-crap-from-anybody member of the elite police squad, which is far more gung-ho than the corrupt police force. From his point of view, practically all of the regular cops are so corrupt they lie hand-in-hand with the drug dealers, and only the strongest (and possibly craziest) can really go beyond the corruption and “bend” the laws to catch drug traffickers. 

The story cuts around from Nascimento’s hard-knock POV, moving between his fractured life with his wife and newborn and on the street with rookies Neto (Caio Junquiera) and Matias (André Ramiro). He hopes to retire and be replaced by one of them. Neto, though, studies in vain to become a lawyer, and Matias, a hot head, works part-time at a cop car repair shop. An elaborate web of corruption spreads even into here, while Neto is lead down a path of trouble by his pot smoking, fellow students. There’s further trouble, vengeance is vowed, and it leads to places we’ve seen in the darkest of cop thrillers.

Elite Squad recently won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, but I wondered, as the film went on, if it would have been made without the massive influence of City of God. While Padilha takes on the aforementioned stylistic tactics (not to mention countless non-professional actors giving intense performances), it’s hard to differentiate this film if one is already familiar with Meirelles’s masterpiece. On its own terms, Elite Squad functions as a somewhat fascinating and exciting police picture. But there’s also a nihilistic nastiness expressed through Nascimento’s point of view. Perhaps Padilha meant to expose how twisted these supercops are, but it backfires. There is no real enemy in the story, while Nascimento observes “Rio is damned, either way.” As hard as it tries to be cutting edge and raw, which occasionally it is, it feels borrowed and ultimately like a drag. Jack Gattanella
September 19, 2008