City of God DVD

A slick and accomplished thriller that won't leave you feeling stupid.

From Brazil comes an exhilarating new film, equal parts Tarantino/Guy Richie slickster spectacle, "Once Upon in America" criminal biography, and international up-from-the-gutter drama. The style is all dazzle and in-your-face pizzazz, quick titles, cuts, and digressions, split screens and smash zooms, while a remarkably complex story unfolds and the funky soundtrack grooves along. "City of God" is Tarantino with a social agenda, and any number of dreary quasi-neo-realist films with a hyped-up sense of drama and excitement. There are more great movie moments here than in a whole multiplex full of vapid Hollywood fare: a crying girl watching her fleeing lover being shot from the back window of a moving car, a little gangster hopeful letting his bloodlust run unchecked for the first time, brothers shot, unfaithful wives murdered, fathers avenged, friends betrayed, children corrupted, in a torrent of surprising reversals and throwaway plotlines that could provide the climaxes for a dozen or so lesser films or a few Shakespeare dramas, all wonderfully cinematic and no less real for it. Mereilles harnesses the hip, accelerated editing pioneered in American Indies to astonishing effect.