Elite Squad

Considerably weaker than City of God, but still a drama of immense power. The worst is that we are forced to watch hell on earth through the eyes of the cruellest policeman ever, whose actions become increasingly disgusting as the story progresses, but at the same time we understand more and more that there is no other way. Whether it's the torture and shooting of dealers or the incredibly tough military training, which at one point is really hard to follow, in any case, José Padilha has achieved his goal of presenting us with a society so bleakly devastated and corrupted on both sides of the law that I will never forget it. (08/28/2012)

Rio de Janeiro is full of pissed off drug dealers and gangs, and they must be taken off the streets before the Pope comes to visit. The elite BOPA unit will be happy to do the job. A very impressive and well shot action drama about how life in Brazil is far from idyllic. But this audiovisual and atmospheric banger has a problem with perhaps too radical ideas in the script. (07/09/2008)

Rio de Janeiro isn’t just a sunny city with Jesus standing on a hill. The slums are overflowing with drugs (and trash), and cops’ pockets with money. Because the men from BOPE are here, doing what is necessary, using whatever means necessary. The direction is marvelous, visually inventive and the screenplay develops on several ideas with huge social implications at once. Whether suffocation by plastic bag or fighting against the system (while still keeping your job), it always hits a nerve. So where would you like to go on holiday? To Rio? (05/29/2013)

I won't deny that in the first half of the film I was still about two minutes ahead of the scene playing out and it was getting on my nerves a bit. The cinematography was confusing with its disjointedness, the frantic and not-so-skillfully strung together editing, the nonsensical voiceover, the confused characters and timelines, and especially the lack of any memorable scene sure did their part. However, in the second half there is brilliant, severely incorrect, brutal, and escalating violence. (05/02/2011)

The affiliation with the famous film City of God is distant and takes place purely on a thematic level. Elite Squad looks at the problem of favelas, poverty, and crime from a completely different angle and uses different film techniques. It is the personal confession of the commander of a special police unit in the form of his inner commentary, complemented by a shaky handheld camera that creates a semi-documentary impression. The craftsmanship of the film amounts to a weak 4 stars. What bothers me is the ideological foundation from which Elite Squad stems. The main character is an elitist who seems to have come straight out of Armin the Knight from Vláčil's film The Valley of the Bees. Armin would let the angels survive, but Nascimento wants to exterminate society to such an extent that the result would be similar. There are very few contemporary films that so prominently promote a right-wing authoritarian and elitist ideology. The film is essentially a defense of the creation and operation of the notorious Brazilian E.M., motorized brigades of the São Paulo police that have been "cleansing" the city of child street gangs since the 1960s and have come to be called death squads. The film's protagonist wants to heal the criminality and corruption of the system through executions and torture. Overall impression: 40%. (09/22/2010)