I know some people will view this as an awesome exposé on Brazil and its corruption and violence, but if you want to know about that, you'd probably learn just as much from fictional movies such as 2 Coelhos or Tropa de Elite, both of which I found much more enjoyable. Or probably you could just listen to Sepultura or something.
Instead what you have here is a documentary that is slapped together in such a way that comes across as a shockumentary. I'm not sure if that is deliberate. Around a flimsy story of a corrupt politician, there are shock elements of tales of violence and kidnapping, graphic scenes of plastic surgery (with gratuitous breasts, even though it's not that type of plastic surgery), some scenes where a police officer is showing all his different guns off and some guy is showing off his bullet-proof Porsche (wow, look at these cool toys), some scenes of frogs being skinned and butchered at a frog farm; most of which are not directly related to the corrupt politician.
Sure it's all interesting enough, and I think there was supposed to be a theme of "look how wild it is, with corrupt rulers stealing all the money while poor people are forced to do crime to survive" but anyone with a realistic world-view knows that's the same worldwide anyway.
If you know nothing about Brazil this will probably interest you, and as a slice of reality, it sure beats what they have on TV. It's good to watch, but as a documentary it's average in its execution. For example it's padded out a whole lot by the use of translators, so all interviews take twice as long as they should have if they had just edited the footage later and added subtitles.
Instead what you have here is a documentary that is slapped together in such a way that comes across as a shockumentary. I'm not sure if that is deliberate. Around a flimsy story of a corrupt politician, there are shock elements of tales of violence and kidnapping, graphic scenes of plastic surgery (with gratuitous breasts, even though it's not that type of plastic surgery), some scenes where a police officer is showing all his different guns off and some guy is showing off his bullet-proof Porsche (wow, look at these cool toys), some scenes of frogs being skinned and butchered at a frog farm; most of which are not directly related to the corrupt politician.
Sure it's all interesting enough, and I think there was supposed to be a theme of "look how wild it is, with corrupt rulers stealing all the money while poor people are forced to do crime to survive" but anyone with a realistic world-view knows that's the same worldwide anyway.
If you know nothing about Brazil this will probably interest you, and as a slice of reality, it sure beats what they have on TV. It's good to watch, but as a documentary it's average in its execution. For example it's padded out a whole lot by the use of translators, so all interviews take twice as long as they should have if they had just edited the footage later and added subtitles.
