Cidade de Deus (City of God) Reviews
Top CriticI came away from this film impressed by its narrative control but unmoved by anything it had to say.
Film4
Another passionate piece of Latin American filmmaking, which documents a tragic period in Rio's history and highlights the horrors of life in poverty-line communities. Technically a remarkable filmmaking achievement too.
Common Sense Media
Powerful, but only for 17 and up.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Suite101.com
Each chapter is endowed with powerful, uncompromising, beguiling and, sometimes, deceptive momentum. What seem like innocuous turns become so critical to the narrative that they tie into the ruthless idea at hand: You never see the bullet that kills you.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
EmanuelLevy.Com
Brazillian director Mereilles' splashy feature debut, a dynamically exciting portrait of Rio's violent gangs, immediately established himsef as an international talent to watch, and the Oscar nods only reaffirmed that status.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
City of God delivers a bruising, visceral experience of the vicious spiral of violence that draws kids into a life of crime, brutality and murder as the only avenue open to them.
ColeSmithey.com
Fernando Meirelles' Brazilian slum epic is a profound, stylistically expansive depiction of three decades of child gang warfare on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro with non-actors playing their poverty-ridden lives for the camera.
Full Review
| Original Score: A+
Projection Booth
The visceral and artistic excitement remains surface-bound.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Big Picture Big Sound
Director Fernando Meirelles creates an aura of fear unlike any film in recent memory.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Film Scouts
Kinetic, exciting, brutal, it's a supreme achievement and better than almost any film you're likely to see this year.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
The performances, many from non-pros, are terrific.
Looking Closer
City of God is not the easiest film to watch, but it is a masterpiece all the same, maybe the best crime drama since the Godfather films.
| Original Score: A-
Oregon Herald
A staggering masterpiece.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Film-Forward.com
At a full-throttle pace and exciting from beginning to end, directors Lund and Meirrelles grab hold of your attention and don't let go.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Low IQ Canadian
Directors Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles stir all the cinematic virtues into this finely-crafted narrative.
Movie Metropolis
It's a grim epitaph for hypocrisy, and the film provides no comfortable answers for solving any of the problems it so well describes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
Weekly Planet (Tampa, FL)
We've seen this story before, more or less -- the blood, the budding psychopaths, the all-too-young victims of urban decay -- but never quite like this.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Cinema Sight
As we see kids of no more than ten or twelve run through the streets with guns shooting those who don't give them what they want, we can't help but pity them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
