. A chicken, intended as part of the pre-battle feast of a street gang in a Rio slum, escapes and is pursued by the demented young warriors, waving pistols and firing at the fugitive fowl. They turn into a narrow road where Rocket stands behind the chicken brandishing a camera. Behind him appears a row of heavily armed cops, and suddenly Rocket is caught in the middle, the likely object of crossfire between ruthless outlaws and corrupt authority. At this cliffhanging point he is introduced as the film's narrator, and the movie flashes back to the Sixties to explain how he came to be there. The film subsequently covers almost a couple of decades in the interwoven lives of a group of kids from the same slum neighbourhood called City of God, often slipping back in time to fill in the details of a career. Finally it returns nearly two hours later to the chicken trying to cross the road. It is a bravura opening, and the rest of the picture lives up to it.
...Meirelles never dwells on anything. With harsh lighting, fast cutting, speeded-up action, jump cuts and much use of a fluid hand-held camera, his film moves with the lightning speed of a hungry young boxer punching way above his weight in round after bloody round. At times its explosive violence resembles Brian De Palma's venture into the Hispanic underworld, Scarface, though it is far less glamorous. More often it brings to mind Scorsese's Goodfellas in the way it covers a couple of decades in its characters' lives in an apparently non-judgmental manner. Had City of God opened last week it would have been on my 10 Best list of 2002. It will be a remarkable year that keeps this film off anyone's 2003 list.
We used to sing it every week during morning mass when I went to Catholic school.
