Six years ago, a spectacular film was made, based in the slums of Rio. It made the festival circuits, including the Chicago Int'l Film Festival, where I had the pleasure of seeing it. It was billed as a thrilling story of 2 boys, one who grew up to be the king of the slum, and the other as his chronicler. It thrilled us as we watched it, and there was an audible gasp when, as the film finished, the narrator revealed this was not fiction but his own story -- it takes quite a work to have such an effect. The film was City of God, and to this day it is one of my top 10 films of all time.
In 2007, the team behind City of God revisited the favelas of Rio in City of Men. Set 20 years after City of God, this tale follows again 2 young men in the "hills," as the subtitling translates the favelas. These two boys, however, are leading a different life.
Ace (Douglas Silva, who people will recognize as monstrous L'il Dice from the first film) and Wallace (not the name in the Brazilian release, but easier for our American ears) are best friends, brothers, turning 18 in the Dead End Hill favela of Rio. Neither is a spectacular man -- Ace grew up knowing his father had been killed when he was young and becoming a father himself just a year before, while Wallace never knew his father. They are simply trying to have their lives, avoiding involvement in the gangs that run each favela.
But there is no where to live in the Hill away from the gang. Wallace's cousin is Midnight, the king of the Hill, but he falls for Camilla, a lieutenant's sister. Ace thinks there is no connection himself to all this, but being friends by itself sucks him into it. As well, the men are looking for Wallace's father and find him, paroled from a term for manslaughter and robbery that we slowly learn about through the course of the film.
As in most gangster films, there is betrayal of the king by another lieutenant, with a revolution/civil war that results in the rise of a new regime and an exile of the other; with this expulsion, Ace and Wallace find themselves exiles as well. Forces push them apart as they learn about their fathers' pasts, all the while moving forward to their own precipice; they must decide if they will go over that edge, or pull back.
The work in and of itself is a good film. It does not have the same rapid and rhythmic pacing of its predecessor, but it it does borrow the same wonderfully stark cinematography that takes the bright colors of Rio and uses them to garishly expose its underbelly. Whereas City of God told the story of a lifetime and brought the favela to the attention of the "developed" world, City of Men limits itself to the decisions made by the men and women of this land. In particular, Douglas Silva's turn as Ace is quite sharp, using his expressiveness to perfect effect, and Rodrigo dos Santos brings a reluctant guilt to the role of Heraldo, Wallace's father, that is honest.
Unfortunately, for me, the film suffers from the almost overexposure of the favela in the last few years. There have been multiple documentaries about the lives of the slums of Rio, and they've even made an appearance in a couple episodes of CSI:Miami. This is not the fault of the film, and if you haven't seen as much about the favelas, this is in your favor. It is a good film, and a good if lesser follow-up to City of God.
If you haven't seen the older film, go get it on DVD now. For the newer one, it's a good film. See it in the theater if you can, but it will have do as well on DVD as on the big screen, so don't turn your life over to make time for it.
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