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Brazil, United States · 2007
1h 25m
Director Jason Kohn
Starring
Genre Documentary
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Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) is a cinematic bullet into the cerebral cortex, a documentary that unflinchingly exploring the cycles of violence that plague Brazil's upper and lower economic classes in fits of rampant corruption and violent kidnappings. The film chronicles these cycles by utilizing highly personalized stories that reflect the growing truth about Brazil's huge economic disparities.
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With an excess of excitable style, samba music, and heady, montage-driven metaphor that threatens to bury his film's key ideas, young-gun director Kohn--a New Yorker with South American roots--has clearly set out to make a splash. So far, he's succeeded.
Gorgeous and terrifying.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
Kohn’s gripping Manda Bala is the opposite of a high-school science doc. It’s a free-form portrait of a place--Brazil--with scary running motifs: kidnapping, mutilation, plastic surgery, bulletproofing, and frog farming.
There’s no denying the sharpness of his (Jason Kohn) insights into a society that hasn’t so much collapsed as reconstituted itself around venality, profiteering and rage.
As forceful as its title suggests, and sometimes unbelievably ballsy.
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
What the film does best is document the lengths to which people are going to protect themselves -- subcutaneous microchips for identification, ever-heavier armor for fancy cars.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Edgy and provocative but with a weakness for sensationalistic footage.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
There's no denying its grip: It is lurid, fascinating, sickening, and eye-opening.
Crammed into a lively 85-minute package delivered with loads of dark humor and cinematic flair, this is a worthy winner of Sundance's Grand Jury prize for documentary.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
Instead of seriously investigating corruption, money laundering and the buying of politicians, Manda Bala would rather spend its time showing slimy brown frogs slithering over one another as they are dumped from one container into another.
It's only a state of mind.
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