CITY OF GOD (2002)  **1/2

Reviewed 1/23/03

Imagine TRAINSPOTTING, SALAAM BOMBAY!, and Brazil’s own PIXOTE all mixed into a stew and you’ve got CITY OF GOD, Brazil’s submission for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar.  Only, it doesn’t quite work.  The fun, irreverent style of TRAINSPOTTING, which enhances and makes understandable the appeal of the world of drugs, however harmful, does not work if one replaces drugs with murder, especially the callous murder of children.  Then it just seems viscerally gratuitous.  CITY OF GOD is certainly full of energy in telling its tale about a young man named Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) who grows up to be a photographer on the mean streets of Rio De Janeiro.  He is surrounded by poverty, crime, and death, but boy, do directors Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles make all the bleakness look glam.  With all the flashbacks, flashbacks within flashbacks, rapid editing, split screens, and the camera following a bullet’s POV, it’s oh so Guy Ritchie.  Only a few of the characters show any complexity ala generous gangster Benny (Philippe Haagensen) and sharp shooting Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge).  But most are more one-dimensional like gang boss Li’l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora), who is basically Joe Pesci’s psychotic from GOODFELLAS except even more so.  Still, despite all that, along with some extremely-expository voice-over narration and some major plot contrivances, the movie remains involving, both for its strong sense of place and the little bits of humanity and humor that squeaks through the over-compensating style.