Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

TA Kristof At times this movie is very powerful and really makes the reality of Brazil's slums come alive. The characters struggle with broken families and shattered dreams, and join gangs because there are few other realistic options. Even though the film is fictional, it is sad to see because there is truth behind it.At other times the movie feels very ham-handed, as the characters deal with themes that have been in many movies before. Fathers who come back, sons who push against them. Most of the characters are not well-defined and lack depth and motivation.I would recommend the movie, but it is not as good as some other Brazilian films about life in the favelas, namely City of God.

ajs-10 This is the follow-up to one of my favourite films, City of God (2002). It continues the theme of life in the poorer parts of Rio and takes a closer look at how things are today. I really enjoyed it, although it doesn't have the depth of 'City of God', I still found the simple storytelling quite refreshing. I had better warn those scared of subtitles that it is in Portuguese with the dreaded words at the bottom of the screen. Here's a brief summary before I give you my thoughts.Two friends, Acerola and Laranjinha are turning eighteen. Acerola is already married and has a son, Clayton. Laranjinha is less than content because he doesn't know who his father is. They both live on 'Dead End Hill', an area that is run by a gang lead by a character known as Midnight. Whilst talking about their plight one day a plan is hatched to discover just who Laranjinha's father is. They ask around and eventually get a lead, but I think it would be giving too much away if I told you any more about this. Meanwhile, one of Midnight's lieutenants defects to another gang and they decide they want to move into 'Dead End Hill'. Who will survive? Will Laranjinha find his father? As you can probably guess, I'm not going to tell you here of the Spoiler Police will be finding my corpse in the quarry.Beautifully shot, I love the grainy look and feel to this film. It's almost like it was filmed on a home movie camera in places, but it still has a professional feel to it. Although it's quite hard to judge a performance in a foreign language, I must give praise to the young leads; Douglas Silva as Acerola and Darlan Cunha as Laranjinha. I thought they were both excellent.This film will always be compared to 'City of God', but it doesn't have the epic scope of that film. Instead it is more compact and because of that it's much easier to identify with the characters. There are little flashbacks to when the boys were younger that is a neat way of bringing the audience closer to the story. Over all, it's a nice simple drama that has some really nice touches. I know it's not had a great deal of exposure, but it's certainly one I can recommend, particularly if you enjoyed 'City of God'. You can probably tell I really enjoyed this one.My Score: 8.6/10.IMDb Score: 7.2/10 (based on 6,016 votes at the time of going to press).Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76/100 (based on 79 reviews counted at the time of going to press).

lastliberal Amidst poverty, racism, drugs, guns and violence, the absence of schools, hospitals, formal employment or government assistance, life in Rio's favelas is a constant challenge.Here, we watch two young men grow up fatherless. Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha) is trying to find his father as he turns 18 so that his name can be on his identity papers. Acerola (Douglas Silva), his best friend, is dealing with his own fatherhood. He has to care for his son while his wife goes to work in another city as a babysitter so they can get a house.While Wallace (Laranjinha) is dealing with his father, who was recently released from prison, Ace (Acerola) is mixed up in a battle over turf on the hill. They find that their fathers are intertwined, and there are some tense moments when the two deal with their friendship.The cinematography was beautiful and the sound during the gun battles was excellent. It seemed more like a war zone than a city, but that is a fact of life for the millions who live there.

Chris Knipp This sepia-sunbleached feature derives from, and features the same main characters as, the eponymous 2002-2005 Brazilian TV series about (mostly) boys in the "favela" hill ghettos above Rio for which Morelli did some of the writing and directing. The series, starring Darlan Cunha as Laranjinha (Wallace) and Douglas Silva as Acerola (Ace) --growing up from year to year and episode to episode--sort of grew out of the Fernando Meirelles/Kátia Lund film, 'City of God,' which in turn was based on Paulo Lins' tumultuous and partly autobiographical novel about three decades in the slums and the involvement of youth as dealers, assassins, and victims. Actually the Ace/Wallace characters as young teenagers, always played by Silva and Cunha, predate 'City of God' by two years; they appeared in a short film called 'Palace II' in 2000. The history of these films and stories is as intricate as the world they depict. Douglas Silva was the prepubescent tough in 'City of God' known by he moniker Dadinho--Lil' Dice.'City of Men' is warmer and more intimate than the original film. 'City of God' has been both admired for its virtuosity--it's full of tours de force of visual violence and equally brilliant feats of rapid storytelling--and condemned as reveling too much in blood and gore, making teenage killers who terrorize neighborhoods into little glamor boys. That's quite true. It's unfortunately also true that in the ghettos of Rio as of other places such as the USA, young gun-toting drug dealers are the sexy local pop stars. Maybe the earlier film fails to take a sufficiently clear moral stand, or too much reflects the viewpoints of the young favela males it depicts. Nonetheless it's exhilarating film-making. Paradoxically, it also has a more positive arc than 'City of Men,' because its hero works his way out of the slums and into mainstream Rio de Janeiro to become a photojournalist. In 'City of Men,' nothing like that happens. Instead, there is a difficult reconciliation between the two boys, on the brink of eighteen, despite a stunning revelation about their lost fathers, and one of the fathers comes back into the picture and, reluctantly at first, chooses to be a warm presence in the life of his son. Both of the boys endure moments of terrible loneliness and isolation, which reveal how isolating the world of shifting and dangerous loyalties and hills fought for and lost is for a boy who in the first place lacks parents. But the focus is on the reconciliations.In the TV series, the boys are in school. They face difficulties even showing up, and only one of them, Ace (Silva) really hits the books (he's also fascinated by guns of all kinds). Laranjinha is closer to turning into a young hood.Thugh the new movie 'City of Men' is less specific than the TV series (judging by the DVD collections of episodes that I've seen) and suffers a bit by comparison with either it or 'City of God,' the vibrancy of the life on offer in all these films is still unmistakable, as well as the attractiveness of the young actors, the warmth of the world evoked--and vernacular swiftness that of the filming and editing, which somehow is both relaxing and unnerving.Wallace/Laranjinha is trying to find out who his real father is; he doesn't want "unknown" to be on the place for "father" on his papers. Acerola knows his father is dead, and he wants to know what happened. He's faced with the local problem from the other side. His wife Cris (Camila Monteiro) keeps leaving their toddler son Clayton (Vinicius Oliveira) with him to take care of. He doesn't want to accept the responsibility. But if he reneges on it, he'll leave Clayton in the same place he and Wallace are in. Ace abandons Clayton on the beach early on when Madrugadão (Midnight, Jonathan Haagensen), the gang leader of the hill where they live, risks assassination to descend on a super-hot day for a swim in the ocean. He also turns some flashy cartwheels and shows off his spectacular pecs. Madrugadão, like Wallace (i.e. Darlan Cunha), is handsome and charismatic. Ace is so childish he forgets his own son; but he rushes back and finds him. And when Cris gets a job in the wealthier city of São Paulo, Ace, with great difficulty, forces himself to take on the responsibility of raising Clayton.Wallace (perhaps a bit too easily) finds his father, a bearded man named Heraldo (Rodrigo dos Santos), who has just gotten out of prison after serving fifteen years of a twenty-year sentence--for murder. Heraldo's beard cannot conceal the fact that he is not very mature. He hasn't shouldered the responsibilities of being a man. But he also carries the weight of suffering and gratitude.When rival gang leader Fasto (Eduardo "BR" Piranha) takes over Midnight's territory on Dead End Hill, a new gang war breaks out right in the middle of Ace and Wallace's journey of self-discovery.'City of Men' is a more tender, individual and grownup story than 'City of God'; from what I've seen of the TV series it grows out of, it's less specific and less witty. It works as a kind of antidote to the amorality one feels in 'City of God,' and its warmth is touching. Nor is it visually ineffective, or its sense of the milieu less rich--except. Except that it quite lacks the momentum and adrenaline-rush brilliance of 'City of God's' virtuoso film-making and editing, or the rich range of minor characters the latter has. It is a little bit meandering, and its fast jump-cut slides from scene to scene sometimes seem out of place. As the AV Club reviewer says, much has been gained in this new film, but much has been lost as well. Still 'City of Men' is well worth watching.