As City Of God: The Fight Rages On begins, Buscapé, the weary photographer who calls himself Rocket and is once again played by Alexandre Rodrigues with a comic sense of intimidation, is stuck in the same place.
He’s caught in the crossfire between rival gangs and the police, just as we left him over two decades ago; still holding the camera and narrating about the ways the cosmos keeps putting him in tough situations. This time, he drones on about how nothing has changed in his eponymous Rio de Janeiro favela as bullets whiz by, bodies pile up, and he continues to take photos of the dead.
Star: Wayne LeGette, Alexandre Rodrigues, Roberta Rodrigues
As City Of God: The Fight Rages On begins, Buscapé, the weary photographer who calls himself Rocket and is once again played by Alexandre Rodrigues with a comic sense of intimidation, is stuck in the same place.
He’s caught in the crossfire between rival gangs and the police, just as we left him over two decades ago; still holding the camera and narrating about the ways the cosmos keeps putting him in tough situations. This time, he’s still talking about how nothing has changed in the Rio de Janeiro favela that gives it its name, as bullets whiz by, bodies pile up, and he keeps snapping photos of the dead.
None of this should be surprising. The point of City of God, the 2002 Oscar-nominated crime drama directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, was that the fact-based violence it sensationalized was cyclical and inescapable. That’s a lesson a long-running show like Narcos took to heart (and capitalized on) to satisfy an appetite for Goodfellas-type content in the favela that City of God stoked.
If there’s a goal for a rerun like The Fight Continues (and that’s a big IF), it’s perhaps to serve as an introspective corrective to a film that was wildly entertaining and brimming with authenticity, but also tended toward voyeurism. What made City of God hit like a bolt of white-hot lightning was its combination of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie pulp literature with a neorealist social drama about poor children from Rio de Janeiro’s favelas destroying each other. But it also left a bad taste in some critics’ mouths, as many characters seemed shallow and disposable, like the corpses strewn across the newspaper Rocket works for.
The new six-part series, produced by Meirelles and directed by Aly Muritiba, brings back much of the original cast (those playing the characters who survived) while covering the same ground with considerably less style. In the first two episodes provided to critics, Rocket is older and much less excitable (he’s naturally outgrown the pubescent vibes of the original). He’s grappling with his role as a photographer (not to mention a guide for the public and stand-in for the filmmakers), especially after he’s confronted with the way his photos are devoured by those untouched by the violence.
His combative 15-year-old daughter tells him he exploits trauma. Her words hurt; even more so when they turn out to be accurate. A cover photo Rocket takes, of an innocent school kid gunned down, is used as a weapon by a corrupt politician who wants to give the militarized police force more autonomy to raid the favelas.
In a post-BLM City of God, these cops will not only be up against criminals (many of their own) but also activists, whom Rocket, and the series as a whole, makes a conscious effort to spotlight. Among them is Barbantinho (Edson Oliveira), Rocket’s childhood best friend who has now become a community organizer with dreams of running for local office. Cinthia (Sabrina Rosa), the girlfriend of Knockout Ned, the original’s civilian turned fading gang leader, is here channeling her trauma into positivity. She oversees the local community center that runs programs to empower children. Berenice, played by Roberta Rodrigues, who saw her lover Shaggy shot dead by the police in the original film, plays a stern matriarchal figure in the community, likely to lay down a heavy hand on any idiot in the neighborhood who joins the local groups.
The first episode hastily introduces these figures, as well as a host of local crime bosses, politicians and journalists in a way that is exhausting and at times incoherent.
The brilliance of City of God, the reason it was rightly celebrated for its script and editing, was in the way it reduced two decades to two dizzying, madcap hours that played with timelines. The film jumped back and forth through the years to the beat of samba.
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