Very violent and well acted and directed film of narcotraffic wars in 1990's Rio de Janeiro. While it is very conventional in reprising Hollywood action aesthetics, it does it with the very same quality of the best movies of that genre, also presenting impressive usage of space and pace. Characters are very nice and the story is quite representative to that historical moment, with a lot of violence on the streets and presidente Collor de Mello producing a disaster in Brazilians' lives. The casting is very skilled, including Raphael Logam, Rui Ricardo Diaz, Silvio Guindane, Flavio Bauraqui, Sergio Malheiros, Fernanda Machado, André Gonçalves, César Troncoso, and Leandro Firmino, who had ridiculously few opportunities in cinema in the past years despite his outstanding performance in City of Good. The only serious problem in the script comes from the fact that it is a conversion of a successful TV series to feature movie format. Indeed, while the TV series will have at least five seasons, the movie corresponds only to the seven initial episodes of the first season, and certainly in a shortened edition which ignores some important developments. The ending is also in a hurry and not satisfactory, being clearly connected to that kind of strategy to finish an episode in a way to invite spectator for the following one, and not to end a feature film.
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