The Brazilian action-crime film “Elite Squad” (originally released as “Tropa de Elite“) opens today in New York. The movie, which continues the favela crime sub-genre made popular by “City of God”, had the highest grossing box office take in history in Brazil.

“Elite Squad” which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, was directed by Jose Padilha, whose previous film “Bus 174″, a documentary project about the tragedy and social implications revolving around the hijacking of a municipal bus in Rio de Janeiro, played a huge role, along with “City of God”, in raising awareness of the enormous social issues of Brazil in the International film audience. Here Padilha dives headlong into fictional narrative, and not with some artsy-fartsy, talky French New Wave kinda thing either. “Elite Squad” is a shoot ‘em up action movie, showing the crime and corruption on both the cop and criminal sides of the relentless, horrific violence in Rio’s slums.

The film provoked much discussion in the Brazilian press when it came to light that a typical reaction in middle class Rio cinemas to the Police officer characters opening fire on drug dealers with automatic weapons was loud cheering. As shocking as this is, it’s worth bearing in mind how difficult it is to even comprehend the crime levels in Rio (7,000+ murders per year in a city with 6.5 million population) and other major Brazilian cities, Sao Paulo especially) and the affect they have on the people’s perceptions of community.

You can takepart by checking out Viva Favela, a Brazilian run NGO helping to bring social justice to the most disadvantaged areas of Rio de Janeiro.

LINKS:

NY Sun: Buying and Selling Justice in Rio: ‘Elite Squad’

NY Times: At Home in a War Zone

Aintitcool: “Elite Squad” wins the Golden Bear in Berlin and we’ve got a review