City of God

Time Richard Corliss

The film is seductive, disturbing, enthralling -- a trip to hell that gives the passengers a great ride.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Like a bomb exploding in a fireworks factory: It's fierce and shocking and dazzling and wonderful.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.

Film Threat K.J. Doughton

Meticulous in its descriptions of well-intended individuals caught up in these ferocious waves of street crime.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

An exhilarating slap in the face, bracing and sexy, smart and visceral, stylish and raw -- the advent of a fabulously exciting new moviemaking talent.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

One of the most uncompromisingly bleak films I've ever seen.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It's a trip to Hell and back, and testimony for embittered cynics of all that a movie can be.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

The film finds a surprising amount of tenderness and humor beneath the brutality. The laughs may catch in the throat, but that's only a byproduct of City Of God's power to leave viewers breathless.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Breathtaking and terrifying, urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director of great gifts and passions: Fernando Meirelles.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

A visual and aural feast that combines elements of classic gangster melodramas, crime epics such as "The Godfather" and playful non-linear narratives such as "Amores Perros," City of God explores a deadly culture while feeling more alive than anything that's hit the big screen in years.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

Emotionally gripping from start to finish, the movie presents an electrifying and unforgettable look at life in a place that God has all but forgotten.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

As the movie's frenetic visual rhythms and mood swings synchronize with the zany, adrenaline-fueled impulsiveness of its lost youth on the rampage, you may find yourself getting lost in this teeming netherworld.

USA Today Mike Clark

This is one movie in which you don't feel the long-ish running time, in part because there always seems to be a surprise (as well as a new street guerrilla) around every corner.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

An epic docudrama - electric and raw.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Despite the grim, serious nature of the subject matter, Meirelles unearths occasional moments of humor, although they are often of the gallows variety.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Undeniably powerful, the work also comes with its own built-in shield against feeling any one character's difficulties too deeply, or for too long.

TV Guide Ken Fox

A tightly woven tapestry of extraordinary breadth, and director Fernando Meirelles's control over the material is extraordinary.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

In God's ghetto, as in so many of the world's forsaken places, warring armies of infants brandish their weapons of self-destruction, while politicians bluster and inspectors sleep.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

For those who didn't get enough violence from Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," welcome to City of God.

San Francisco Chronicle Octavio Roca

Brutal, tough to watch but impossible to ignore.

Chicago Reader Staff (not credited)

Predictably, the violence is overwhelming. But the massacres are glamorized, and the characters look like they're posing for tourism posters.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Nothing if not confrontational.

Slate David Edelstein

It's sensationally well-made: skittery and kinetic, packed with mayhem, yet framed (and narrated) with witty detachment, so that the carnage never seems garish. The film is far from a work of art, but it marks the emergence of a great new action superchef.

Variety David Rooney

The impressive filmmaking craftsmanship and sharp storytelling skills make this two-hour-plus epic fly by.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It takes a strong stomach to sit through its two-plus hours of non-stop brutality (much of it involving very small children).

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A razzle-dazzle lower-depths melodrama.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A potent and unexpected mixture of authenticity and flash -- even if this is what happened on the ground, making it worth our time on screen is just beyond the contortionist abilities of even this most acrobatic of films.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Meirelles's picture is so keen to brandish its social wrath, and its spirits are so rampagingly high, that the bruises it inflicts barely last a night. [20 January 2003, p. 94]

LA Weekly John Powers

But if City of God whirs with energy for nearly its full 130-minute running time, it is oddly lacking in emotional heft for a work that aspires to the epic -- it is essentially a tarted-up exploitation picture whose business is to make ghastly things fun.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

In its cinematic approach, though, the film is as slick as any Hollywood thriller, directed by Fernando Meirelles with visual flourishes - jazzy editing, lurid colors, crackling sound effects - that dilute the impact of what might have been an indelible cautionary tale.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Undeniably powerful, but also rather numbing.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Full of action, but no soul.