A slice of "kinetic" cinema (or what would be called "hyperactive" if it were a child) that grabs you by the shirt collar and shakes the living daylights out of you: an antsy camera, fast-motion, split-screen, yellow flashbacks, a loop-the-loop storyline that keeps circling back on itself, a tangential digression, a yackety-yak-yak wiseguy narration, chapter headings, the kitchen sink. The subject of gun-crazy youth gangs in the slums of Rio de Janeiro is of course a real one, and indeed the budding photographer hero is based upon a real person, with a paraded portfolio of real photos to prove it. But while the violence is unglamorous, the voguish, flashy, anything-David-O.-Russell-or-Roger-Avary-can-do-I-can-do-better visual style tends to trivialize everything. And monotonize it. With Alexandre Rodrigues, Matheus Nachtergaele, Seu Jorge; written and directed by Fernando Meirelles. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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