TROPA DE ELITE (ELITE SQUAD)

Brazil, 2007, 118 minutes, Colour.
Wagner Moura, Caio Junqueira, Andre Ramiro, Fernande Machado.
Directed by Jose Padilha.

Rio de Janeiro can be a frightening place, especially the barrios, and especially if you have seen City of God and City of Men, films that made a big impact in their own country as well as around the world. This was the world of the slums, of poverty, of drug dealers who rule the barrios with weapons and violence and of attempts by the law to combat crime. They were films which took the audience inside.

Elite Squad (co-written by the writer of City of God) will not allay the fright. This time, however, we enter the same world of poverty, drugs and violence along with the police, through an Elite Squad of intense officers who apply the law sometimes with the same violence as their criminal targets.

The film is complex in its plotting and requires a great deal of attention as well as facial recognition to remember just who is who in the squad and who is who among the corrupt police who seem to control the force. Also, after the turmoil of the opening, the action goes back six months earlier, then catches up and proceeds from there – which also requires our wits to be about us.

The narrative is a voiceover by one of the elite, a principled man with an obsessive streak who wants to find a worthy successor so that he can retire and be with his pregnant wife who gives birth during this time. His two candidates are friends from school days. At the opening we see and hear how one is single-minded and trigger happy, the other more measured. When shooting breaks out in a crowded club, we are taken into the world of the squad, including a strenuously demanding training session.

In fact, the film is very disturbing indeed, not just for the presentation of the mayhem in vivid and violent sequences, but in its portrayal of systematic corruption within the police force, the exploitation of the locals for protection from criminals and the schemes for making money by bribes as well as the cut-throat betrayals and mutual suspicions of one officer invading the protected neighbourhood of another and the plans to get rid of rivals.

As the trigger-happy squad member is assigned to repair cars (and discovers that the police steal the car parts and sell them), he becomes more and more determined to root out corruption but, uses the same means of skimming and lies, with his friend to set up culprits. His friend, meantime, is studying law at university and mixing with a group of rich young adults who are always on the lookout for hash and use the same drug lords and dealers. This character is more immediately sympathetic so that his growing more and more intensely violent is emotionally alarming as he relentlessly pursues the local murderous drug lord.

A surprise winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin, 2008, this is strong and powerful stuff which many would find very hard going.

1.The portrait of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, the barrios, drugs, violence, poverty?

2.The police perspective, the facts of the 1990s and the Elite Squad, the preparation for the papal visit, the threats to the barrios and the drug leaders, the deaths, the fascist application of law and order?

3.The location photography, the barrios, the nightclub, the streets, the precincts? The hand-held camera? The editing and pace? The strong score?

4.The structure of the film, the opening and the shootout, the flashback, the information, the characters, the issues, the squad, police corruption, the set-ups? A different perspective when the scene was photographed again? The audience’s view of the police?

5.The continuous voice-over, informative or too much? The perspective of Capitan Nascimento? His pride, the squad? His wife and her pregnancy? His wanting to be replaced? His choice of Nato and Andre? His training them? The justification of his choice?

6.The captain and the squad, the selection of the men, the detailed training, the ethos, the fascist behaviour, Nascimento and his interrogations, vicious, the plastic bags, the guns? The contrast at home, his wife, talking with her? His arrival and his shouting at her, her incomprehension, leaving?

7.Andre and Nato and the shooting, Nato not shooting, their friendship from childhood, their being selected, their response to Nascimento, being complimentary, the set-ups, the money, the corruption, the callout to the club? The shootings?

8.Andre and the cars, the parts, learning about corruption, the phone calls, the police selling the parts? His principles? The police cuts from intakes, bribes?

9.Nato and the law, going to class, the intellectual discussions about society, law and order, the police? His being undercover? Friendship with Maria? His love for her? The rich students, his condemnation of them? Their links with the dealers, their own use of drugs? Contributing to the corruption?

10.The corrupt police chiefs, their explanations, protection issues, shopkeepers, the deals, their territories, jealousies and rivalries? The phone calls, the shootouts?

11.The club, the plan, the arrival, the crowd, the decision to shoot, the consequent chaos? The targeted police officer, corrupt but the victim of his higher officials and their jealousies?

12.The portrait of the dealers, the leaders, the drug lords, the young children used as lookouts, Nascimento’s interrogation of the boy, his being taken away, his consequent death, his mother coming to talk to Nascimento, her confrontation, his reaction, emotions, consciousness of his own child, the mother haunting him?

13.The scenes of vigorous physical training, the tough demands on the squad?

14.Nascimento and his sense of mission, the information about the drug lord, the girl and her information, going to the girlfriend, the reaction of the drug leader, his killing the woman, burning the social worker?

15.The drug lord and his escape, his eating with his friend, the raid, the death of Andre, Nato and the gun, Nascimento urging him on to kill? The end of the film – and Nascimento saying his mission had been accomplished?

16.The discussions about social issues, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and crime? Ethical and intellectual issues? Emotional issues? A vision of Brazil and social chaos?