A while ago I heard that RoboCop was going to be remade. Like probably most film fans, I thought to myself why anyone would attempt such folly. That’s why I was piqued when the other day I was driving home, and I happened to catch an interview on the CBC with Brazilian director Jose Padiha. The gist of the interview was the question ‘why the hell would you want to remake Robocop’. To answer that question, Padiha had to chronicle his filmography to show how he came to such a decision.

Padiha is an extremely well informed and eloquent gentleman as an interviewee. Basically, he’s a man on a mission. A mission to expose police corruption. You can tell by…

"It's a living hell, but it's what you do" -Capitao Nascimento,

DAMN... try watching Elite Squad and City of God and then complaining about your stupid little problems.

How far will they go for what they consider justice? In Elite Squad, a group of elite police officers have to clean out a neighborhood of drug dealers before the Pope comes into town and it is intense. The first hour is about setting up the squad and humanizing all of the characters and the second half is about kicking ass and taking names. It's an excellent, and brutally real film about a the role of police in a war-torn community and I recommend it to anyone into the crime genre.

The…

A brutal, unwavering & violent dive into the criminal underworld existing within the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Elite Squad is a semi-fictional account of Brazil's own SWAT team, known as BOPE, and while the film became a cultural phenomenon in its country during its time of release, I fail to see anything that's so impressive about it.

Set in the late 1990s, Elite Squad (also known as Tropa de Elite) follows the leader of Rio de Janeiro's Special Police Operations Squad who is looking for his replacement as he intends to retire from the field soon and take the job of training new recruits. But his final operation requires him to take down drug dealers & criminals in the slum area…

Film Number 22 on PinHeadLarry145's 30 Days 30 Countries Film Challenge!

Brazil, 2007

At any given moment, if you turned on Elite Squad you would probably see something that resembles a high octane Spec Ops action flick. Like something out of a video game. Shots echoing in the background, bombed out buildings and rebel soldiers running through rubble. Is this Russia or some post-Apocalyptic battleground?

No.

It's just a shitty favela in Rio.

I've been picking movies for this challenge that are either culturally important to their home countries or represent the people and the arts of the place. I think I've done a good job so far (with a couple exceptions) but this one proved to be a different…