Tropa De Elite – Elite Squad (2007)

Directed by: Jose Padilha | 115 minutes | action, drama, thriller, crime | Actors: Wagner Moura, Caio Junqueira, André Ramiro, Milhem Cortaz, Luiz Gonzaga de Almeida, Fernanda de Freitas, Bruno Delia, Marcelo Escorel, André Felipe, Thelmo Fernandes, Emerson Gomes, Paulo Hamilton, Bernardo Jablonsky, Fábio Lago, Daniel Lentini, Fernanda Machado, Thiago Mendonça, Alexandre Mofatti, Erick Oliveira, Otto Jr, Maria Ribeiro, André Santinho, Tenente Renan Patrick Santos, Tinho, Ricardo Sodré, Thogun, Marcelo Valle, Paulo Vilela

‘Tropa de Elite’ is set in 1997 in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Lawlessness and corruption is the norm there. Hundreds of thousands live in the favelas in extremely poor and violent conditions. These slums are completely controlled by heavily armed drug gangs who have their own territory. The police are corrupt, play the game with the drug lords and allow the drug trade in exchange for corruption money. An ordinary cop can hardly survive if he doesn’t play this game. The story of the film is told by a police officer of the elite BOPE corps in the widely used form of the voice-over. The BOPE as an elite corps is not corrupt and fights corruption almost as ruthlessly as the drug lords run the drug trade in the favelas. Nascimento (Wagner Moura) looks back on his career and tells his story. He has been involved in this war situation for a number of years and wants to stop it. He is on the verge of a burnout due to the enormous stress of the constant violence. In addition, his wife is pregnant, she wants him to stop. So there are also tensions at home. He constantly takes pills to keep from going crazy and is looking for a successor. The problem is that the Pope comes to visit and also wants to visit the slum. This puts enormous pressure on the police force and explains why the police units want to retake power in the slums with great violence.

Two young cops, Neto (Caio Junqueira) and Matias (André Ramiro), want to join the elite special corps, fed up with the ongoing corruption they face in their daily police work. ‘Tropa de Elite’ shows us the story of their training and the war the BOPE wages with the gangs. No one is spared, many are killed. It is in any case impossible for the ordinary police to penetrate the favelas without ‘permission’. Impressive are the images of the heavy training that the BOPE candidates undergo, the drill methods used are known from other film stories, but remain inhumanly heavy. As a sideline in the scenario, a romance with an employee of an aid organization active in the slums is built in, with little added value to the story in itself. Matias meets Maria (Fernanda Machado) while studying law at university. The later discovery that he is not a student, but a police officer, of course means that he can no longer go into the slums to visit her there.

‘Tropa de Elite’ was filmed under harsh conditions. During the shooting, members of the film crew were kidnapped by gang members. With the slums as filming locations, shooting was dangerous and had to be negotiated beforehand with the local drug lords. Film equipment and weapons were also stolen. Central to the story is always the battle and battles with the gangs. As a result, the film contains the necessary confrontational scenes. The fast editing and the restless camera work make the pace of the film high. The difficult living conditions in the favelas are impressively depicted. For lovers of hard action movies there is therefore a lot to enjoy. The entire cast is well acted.

‘Tropa de Elite’ surprisingly won the Golden Bear 2008 at the Berlin Film Festival. The film broke visitor records in Brazil, but also sparked a lot of controversy. The film is said to glorify violence and paint a one-sided picture. Anyway, this film gives a highly realistic impression of the war being waged in the favelas. The violence is undeniable and is therefore realistic, about a thousand people are killed in shootings every year. At the same time, the film somewhat praises BOPE’s brutality and sometimes brutal countermeasures, apparently as the only possible answer in these circumstances. As a result, nuances are sometimes somewhat lacking. A penetrating and intimidating film that pours out the raw reality unadorned and sometimes with little nuance. Confrontational, hectic, shocking, heart-pounding and exciting!