City of God (2002) Review: A Favela Epic at Full Throttle

Is City of God worth watching?

Yes. City of God is a landmark of world cinema, a ferociously energetic crime saga that makes its style serve an urgent, heartbreaking story. Fernando Meirelles and co-director Kátia Lund chart decades of life in a Rio de Janeiro favela with the propulsion of a thriller and the scope of a novel. The only caution is its violence: it is relentless, frequently involves children, and is designed to disturb rather than excite.

What is City of God about?

City of God is narrated by Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a boy growing up in Cidade de Deus, a housing project on the edge of Rio de Janeiro, from the late 1960s onwards. Rocket is timid, observant and more interested in photography than guns, and he watches as the neighbourhood’s small-time hoods give way to something far more dangerous.

Chief among the new generation is Li’l Zé (Leandro Firmino), a boy with a hunger for power who grows into the most feared drug lord in the area, alongside his more easy-going friend Benny (Phellipe Haagensen). As the drug trade expands, the favela is drawn into a spiralling gang war, and Rocket’s camera may be his only route to a different life.

The film is adapted from Paulo Lins’s novel, itself inspired by real events. It is a Brazilian production in Portuguese, running 130 minutes, and it was first shown at Cannes in 2002 before going on to earn four Academy Award nominations, including Best Director.

Style that serves the story

The filmmaking is breathtaking. César Charlone’s camera is restless and handheld, the editing is fast and playful, and the film leaps across time with freeze frames, split perspectives and chapter-like digressions that tell the history of an apartment, a gun or a gang in a few dazzling minutes. The famous opening, a chase after an escaped chicken, sets the tone: comic, frantic and suddenly deadly.

This is not style for its own sake. The shifting colour palette, from the warm, dusty tones of the early years to the harsher, colder look of later decades, tracks the neighbourhood’s descent. The film’s structure, which circles back to events from new angles, mirrors Rocket’s growing understanding of how violence reproduces itself.

A cast drawn from the streets

Much of the film’s power comes from its performers, many of them young non-professionals from Rio’s favelas. Leandro Firmino’s Li’l Zé is terrifying precisely because he seems so ordinary, a boy with a nervous grin whose cruelty grows unchecked. Alexandre Rodrigues gives Rocket a gentle, watchful warmth that makes him the film’s moral centre, and Phellipe Haagensen’s Benny has a charm that shows how easily the gang world could seduce.

The children are the film’s most shocking element. Boys barely old enough to hold guns form their own gangs, and the film makes clear that violence here is not a choice but an inheritance, passed down from one generation to the next.

The one real caveat

City of God is unflinching, and some viewers will find its violence too much to bear. The film’s kinetic energy also means that it occasionally risks making the gang life look thrilling, a tension critics have debated since its release. Its sprawling cast and time-hopping structure can also be hard to track on first viewing. These are not flaws so much as warnings: the film asks a great deal of its audience, and it is meant to.

Who should watch City of God?

It is essential for adult viewers who love crime epics, world cinema and stories rooted in real places and histories. Its two hours pass at a gallop, but they are intense. Expect graphic violence, including against children, drug use, sexual content and strong language throughout.

To go deeper into this world:

• City of Men, the spin-off film that follows two boys from the same world into young adulthood.
• Pixote, the earlier Brazilian classic about street children, whose raw realism paved the way for this film.
• Central Station, a gentler Brazilian film that also sees the country through a child’s struggle to survive.

The verdict

City of God is a thrilling, harrowing and formally brilliant film that captures an entire community’s history in two furious hours. Its violence is hard to watch, but that is the point; few films have made the cycle of poverty and crime feel so vivid, or so urgent.

Rating: 5/5