Advanced Search Beta »
Basic Search Fields
City of God
Metascore
79 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 33 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 33
  3. Negative: 0 out of 33
view
per page
  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    Breathtaking and terrifying, urgently involved with its characters, it announces a new director of great gifts and passions: Fernando Meirelles.
  2. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Megan Lehmann
    100
    Like a bomb exploding in a fireworks factory: It's fierce and shocking and dazzling and wonderful.
  3. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    100
    One of the most uncompromisingly bleak films I've ever seen.
  4. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Mark Caro
    100
    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.
  5. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: K.J. Doughton
    100
    Meticulous in its descriptions of well-intended individuals caught up in these ferocious waves of street crime.
  6. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    100
    A marvelous achievement that refuses to avert its gaze from the poetry and the insane savagery of the hopeless.
  7. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    100
    An exhilarating slap in the face, bracing and sexy, smart and visceral, stylish and raw -- the advent of a fabulously exciting new moviemaking talent.
  8. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    100
    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.
  9. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    100
    The film is seductive, disturbing, enthralling -- a trip to hell that gives the passengers a great ride.
  10. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    100
    It's a trip to Hell and back, and testimony for embittered cynics of all that a movie can be.
  11. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    100
    One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.
  12. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Jean Oppenheimer
    90
    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.
  13. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    90
    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.
  14. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    88
    An epic docudrama - electric and raw.
  15. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    88
    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.
  16. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    88
    Despite the grim, serious nature of the subject matter, Meirelles unearths occasional moments of humor, although they are often of the gallows variety.
  17. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    83
    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.
  18. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    80
    A tightly woven tapestry of extraordinary breadth, and director Fernando Meirelles's control over the material is extraordinary.
  19. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    75
    For those who didn't get enough violence from Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," welcome to City of God.
  20. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Octavio Roca
    75
    Brutal, tough to watch but impossible to ignore.
  21. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    75
    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.
  22. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    70
    Nothing if not confrontational.
  23. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    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.
  24. Variety
    Reviewed by: David Rooney
    70
    The impressive filmmaking craftsmanship and sharp storytelling skills make this two-hour-plus epic fly by.
  25. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Staff (not credited)
    70
    Predictably, the violence is overwhelming. But the massacres are glamorized, and the characters look like they're posing for tourism posters.
  26. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    67
    It takes a strong stomach to sit through its two-plus hours of non-stop brutality (much of it involving very small children).
  27. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    63
    A razzle-dazzle lower-depths melodrama.
  28. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: John Powers
    60
    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.
  29. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    60
    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.
  30. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    60
    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]
    All this critic's reviews
  31. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    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.
  32. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    50
    Full of action, but no soul.
  33. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    50
    Undeniably powerful, but also rather numbing.
prev next
Page:
  • 1

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
8.7 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 162 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 69 out of 77
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 77
  3. Negative: 4 out of 77
  1. DaveH.
    4
    Such a waste of great performances. No characters are fleshed out to the extent that they become interesting in any way. Rocket, despite being the protagonist, takes a passive, peripheral backseat to the action. The young Lil' Dice is played brilliantly and is a very convincing psychopath, but we get to know little about either him or other characters. My interest in the film wandered constantly with so much of the narrative being devoted to exposition. Inconsequential informaion about characters' history and the logistics of the favella drug circuits is divulged by the truckload while the actual story plods throughout. Dramatically hollow and inertly paced, and this is meant to be a thriller? I have no desire to see this film again.… Full Review »
  2. Lawrence
    5
    I actually feel my grade may be too high. Think the facelessly cheap Black Hawk Down or Spielberg's idiotic mechanical War of the Worlds, only relocated to the slums of Brazil and replete with its own set of hollow cardboard characters. Honestly, what's all the fuss about? For the record, I vastly prefer video games where, y'know, I'm in CONTROL. And boast better dialogue. They exist, ppl.… Full Review »
  3. ImUnavailable
    9
    City of God tells its story through multiple small stories and numerous characters yet the tale it tells and the world it shows is remarkably cohesive. A bleak picture is painted of 1960's Rio, one where goodness is easily corrupted and the corrupted hold the power.… Full Review »
See all user reviews »