Brazil's new hit has a reactionary message, leavened only by its incompetence Elite Squad (18) dir: José Padilha

International success can liberate a country's film industry, but it can also inhibit its appeal. Some Brazilian hotshot director might be making the dizziest screwball comedies the world has ever known, but it's unlikely that we'll get to see them.

Since the phenomenon of City of God in 2002, the marketplace has had a taste for favela stories from Brazil, preferably shot in hyperbolic Scorsese-Vision. The producer Harvey Weinstein backed City of God, and is hoping for similar results from Elite Squad, which he executive-produced. His name appears before that of the director, José Padilha, and even before the title, but I wouldn't crow about the film if I were him. Elite Squad is a shambles - superficial, reactionary and so clumsily pieced together that I began to wonder if the editor had a grudge against the Padilha family going back generations.

We are in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro once more. Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is the shining star of the Bope, a special unit called in to sort out those problems in Rio that the normal police can't handle. He and his officers are tough cookies - not that you'd know it from the audition process, in which potential recruits are shoved around a bit and bombarded with such feeble insults as: "Go back to your precinct!" Haven't the film-makers seen Full Metal Jacket? Just thinking about the drill sergeant in that picture is more harrowing than watching this sequence, which plays like a pilot for a peak-time reality show.

The unit's preferred method of interrogation is to give a suspect a sound beating and then fasten a plastic bag over his head. As a means of extracting information, it is somewhat flawed, as the suspects have an annoying habit of dying. But it delivers the sort of irresponsibly gratuitous spectacle that is sure to entice burly Andy McNab fans into the cinema. And anything that gets them out from under their mum's feet for a few hours can only be a good thing.

Presiding over a regime that makes Guantanamo Bay look like a Montessori nursery has taken its toll on Nascimento. With a loving wife, a baby on the way, and guilt pangs over the part he played in the death of a young lookout, he has decided to put his roughneck days behind him. Before he can leave the Bope, he has to select and train his own replacement. The intellectual Matias (André Ramiro) seems the obvious candidate, though it's difficult for us to care about his descent from principled student to potential thug when he exhibits all the charm of a sick pet in a hot car.

Nascimento has other problems. Unbeknownst to his family or colleagues, he is suffering from a nasty case of Excessive Voice-over Syndrome. He comes out with the most ludicrous drivel: "With war you always pay the price, and when it gets too high you bail", "The only right answer was not to get shot", and so on, each line sounding like the answer you would get if you were foolish enough to ask Grant Mitchell for an epigram. Even when all the information we could possibly need from a scene is before our eyes, Nascimento has to stick his oar in; he even comments over the top of an argument in which he is already doing all the talking.

There's something else that is odd about Nascimento: he is eerily omniscient, capable of describing to us conversations and even sexual encounters at which we know he wasn't present. If it weren't for howlers like this, I could probably get more worked up about the film's dodgy military fetish, or its endorsement of torture. But the insidious message will do well to be heard through the botched delivery of this dislikeable picture. In fact, I still can't quite believe it was selected for the Berlin Film Festival this year, let alone that it went on to win the top prize - a clear case of what's known in Germany as going from bad to bratwurst.

Pick of the week

Paris (15)
dir: Cédric Klapisch
This charming film has had neither the reviews nor the release that it deserves. Catch it quick!

Blindsight (nc)
dir: Lucy Walker
Documentary about blind Tibetan children on a climbing expedition.

WALL·E (U)
dir: Andrew Stanton
Pixar serves up yet another slice of animated perfection.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website