Tropa de Elite
is the most talked about Brazilian film since Fernando Meirelles'
Oscar-nominated masterpiece City of God. Director Jose Padilha has
already scooped the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival with this
extremely violent and moving work based on fictionalised accounts of
the activities of Rio de Janeiro's strategic paramilitary police force
just before the Pope's visit to Brazil in 1997. The film is an in depth
exploration of want it takes to become a member of BOPE, or Rio's
Special Police Operation Battalion. It is also an exposé of systemic
corruption within Rio's police forces.
Few people will remember the Brazilian police authorities flying to
Britain in 2005 to humiliate the Metropolitan Police about the folly
of "shoot to kill" policies following the tragic accidental shooting of
Jean Charles de Menezes. Even then I thought, "Hello, who are the
Brazilian Police to lecture the Met about the fallacy of shooting first
and asking questions later?" If anything, Tropa de Elite is cinematic
proof that the police forces in Rio are real experts in lethal violence
and arbitrary torture.
Tropa de Elite graphically depicts what many of us in the West had
already suspected about the Brazilian authorities attitude towards
policing in the slums of Rio – they train, arm themselves to the teeth,
and unleash death squads in Rio's poor and lawless favelas. The central
character, Capitan Nascimento (Wagner Moura), coldly explains how BOPE
"enter the favela to kill – never to die." Capitan Nascimento is Rio's
Beowulf, a good-looking archetypal heroic militarist who is also a
hideous monster, and he knows it – that is one reason why he must leave
this elite police squad. Moura delivers an impressive performance as
the tough but flawed Capitan. Tropa de Elite is no ordinary cops and
robbers film - it is to all intents and purposes a civil war film.