Boyz In The Hood of Rio

Rarely is a movie everything the critics and the filmmakers promise it to be. One such film is City of God. An epic coming-of-age story that never overplays its hand, City of God is Boyz In The Hood with more breadth, scope and ambition than John Singleton could achieve in three lifetimes. Based on the gigantonormous bildungsroman by Paulo Lins, the adaptation follows a boy named Rocket over two decades in Cidide de Deus, a ghetto in Rio De Janeiro so shanty that seven year-olds kill seven year-olds (does it get shantier?). Rocket, played by Alexandre Rodriguez, earns every scrap of dignity and sympathy he deserves and the characters that orbit him elevate the film into territory rarely touched on film, giving the themes a resonance more typically found in Garcia-Marquez novels or Greek tragedies.