elite squad Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The fascinating yet flawed Elite Squad opens in limited release today. Here's my review from the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. -- Scott Weinberg

It's rare that a good film will irritate me, but it happened at least fifteen times during the rather intense Brazilian import Elite Squad, and here's why: The film is saddled with an omnipresent voice-over narration from the main character, and this running commentary deflates, detracts, and nearly ruins every GOOD thing about the movie. Every time the viewer is offered a chance to think for himself, make a decision about a specific character, or draw a moral conclusion about the onscreen mayhem -- up pops the stunningly unnecessary voice-over monologue. After a while it starts to feel like the filmmakers simply don't trust your intelligence, and so they insist on explaining every scene, every theme, and every possible motivation the characters might have. It's a damn good thing that Elite Squad has some other very solid assets in its corner, because that narration almost kills the whole movie.

Based on the book Elite da Tropa by Andre Batista, Rodrigo Pimentel, and Luiz Soares, Elite Squad takes us inside two very different Rio de Janiero police units. On one end we have the "regular" police, most of whom are either sickeningly corrupt or simply ineffective. On the other side we have the BOPE, which is Brazil's ultra-elite unit of peace-keeping ass-kickers. Even the regular cops step to the side when the "elite squad" arrives on the scene, and it's the leader of this unit who becomes our entry point.

With the film industry so busy that even the art houses are having trouble finding room for the indies they want to show, some execs are starting to look at more creative ways of getting their movies seen. That's why the Weinstein Co. is handing over one of its products to IFC Films, which will release it later this year in theaters and -- on the same day -- through Video-on-Demand, right into people's homes.

The movie is Elite Squad, a Brazilian drama about police corruption that won the top prize at Berlin in February and comes from a great pedigree: it was directed by José Padilha, who made the fantastic documentary Bus 174, and co-written by Bráulio Mantovani, who wrote City of God. (Cinematical's Scott Weinberg reviewed it mostly favorably at Tribeca.) It's the kind of foreign film that would normally do pretty well on the U.S. art house circuit, if the art houses weren't already overcrowded at the moment.

So the Weinsteins -- who actually helped produce the film, rather than merely buying the finished product at a festival -- have made a deal (with unspecified terms) with IFC Films. IFC will release it in a few theaters at the same time that it becomes available through IFC's Video-on-Demand service. Our Christopher Campbell wrote an excellent summary of this practice, known as "day-and-date," in April. Basically, day-and-date helps non-blockbuster films get seen by more people.

It's rare that a good film will irritate me, but it happened at least fifteen times during the rather intense Brazilian import Elite Squad, and here's why: The film is saddled with an omnipresent voice-over narration from the main character, and this running commentary deflates, detracts, and nearly ruins every GOOD thing about the movie. Every time the viewer is offered a chance to think for himself, make a decision about a specific character, or draw a moral conclusion about the onscreen mayhem -- up pops the stunningly unnecessary voice-over monologue. After a while it starts to feel like the filmmakers simply don't trust your intelligence, and so they insist on explaining every scene, every theme, and every possible motivation the characters might have. It's a damn good thing that Elite Squad has some other very solid assets in its corner, because that narration almost kills the whole movie.

Based on the book Elite da Tropa by Andre Batista, Rodrigo Pimentel, and Luiz Soares, Elite Squad takes us inside two very different Rio de Janiero police units. On one end we have the "regular" police, most of whom are either sickeningly corrupt or simply ineffective. On the other side we have the BOPE, which is Brazil's ultra-elite unit of peace-keeping ass-kickers. Even the regular cops step to the side when the "elite squad" arrives on the scene, and it's the leader of this unit who becomes our entry point.

The name is Rio, but in José Padilha's Elite Squad, it doesn't look like anyone's dancing. The city has been the source of ever-increasing crime, and this turmoil has inspired the director to film an action movie that digs into Rio's underworld. Elite, said to be based on facts, is about a special forces operative who is fighting against Rio's drug gangs, but it isn't a simple case of crime and punishment. The movie includes graphic scenes of torture and execution, which have spurned unrest by Rio's officers, and found itself in a flurry of pirating, as thousands of copies have hit the streets before the film even gets released -- according to The Guardian.

Rio police tried to ban the film from cinemas, but it was backed by the judge who rejected the case, saying that the feature portrayed the "day-to-day reality of a good part of the people living in this city," and even Rio's governor, Sergio Cabral said that it is "faithful in uncovering the serious problems that we face in terms of public security." The city's problems have spurred Bope, the Special Police Operations Battalion to battle the city's enemies "at whatever cost," and in the film, this includes executing drug traffickers with a rifle shot to the head. Obviously, this isn't the feel-good story of the year, but something that'll probably weigh on moviegoers for a long time when it premieres next month in Brazil. Padilha hopes that "people will watch this and say: 'Hell, we have to change these rules. We hope to generate a debate.'" Now we'll have to wait and see if the film gets overseas distribution, and what sort of debate it inspires for world-wide audiences in the wake of Abu Gharib.