Critic Rating
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Director
Fernando Meirelles
Cast
Alexandre Rodrigues,
Leandro Firmino,
Phellipe Haagensen,
Douglas Silva,
Jonathan Haagensen,
Matheus Nachtergaele
Genre
Drama,
Crime
Ostracized on the outskirts of Rio, poor residents live in fear of drug-fueled gang violence. Three young men embark on different yet intertwined paths as they try to survive in this lawless place, where survival is often synonymous with crime.
This is the kind of film that sticks in your mind long after you see it. I was so transfixed by this movie, unable to look away despite how brutal it was. It's a tough watch, violent and unrelenting, but that only makes the unexpected moments of beauty even more beautiful. If you can stomach it, you will be absolutely glued to the screen.
Cinematographically slick and undeniably powerful, City of God is full of both action and soul, marching to the beat of unrelenting samba music for the entirety of the film.
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.
New York Post by Megan Lehmann
Like a bomb exploding in a fireworks factory: It's fierce and shocking and dazzling and wonderful.
Time by Richard Corliss
The film is seductive, disturbing, enthralling -- a trip to hell that gives the passengers a great ride.
Film Threat by K.J. Doughton
Meticulous in its descriptions of well-intended individuals caught up in these ferocious waves of street crime.
Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy
An exhilarating slap in the face, bracing and sexy, smart and visceral, stylish and raw -- the advent of a fabulously exciting new moviemaking talent.
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
One of the most uncompromisingly bleak films I've ever seen.
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
It's a trip to Hell and back, and testimony for embittered cynics of all that a movie can be.
The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps
The film finds a surprising amount of tenderness and humor beneath the brutality. The laughs may catch in the throat, but that's only a byproduct of City Of God's power to leave viewers breathless.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Breathtaking and terrifying, urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director of great gifts and passions: Fernando Meirelles.
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
As the movie's frenetic visual rhythms and mood swings synchronize with the zany, adrenaline-fueled impulsiveness of its lost youth on the rampage, you may find yourself getting lost in this teeming netherworld.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
It takes a strong stomach to sit through its two-plus hours of non-stop brutality (much of it involving very small children).
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Meirelles's picture is so keen to brandish its social wrath, and its spirits are so rampagingly high, that the bruises it inflicts barely last a night. [20 January 2003, p. 94]
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
A potent and unexpected mixture of authenticity and flash -- even if this is what happened on the ground, making it worth our time on screen is just beyond the contortionist abilities of even this most acrobatic of films.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
Undeniably powerful, but also rather numbing.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
In its cinematic approach, though, the film is as slick as any Hollywood thriller, directed by Fernando Meirelles with visual flourishes - jazzy editing, lurid colors, crackling sound effects - that dilute the impact of what might have been an indelible cautionary tale.
Boston Globe by Wesley Morris
Full of action, but no soul.
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