As a center for crime and elusive punishment, you can't beat Brazil. It's massive population and mountainous ghettos seem fueled by internal corruption, undisguised graft, and everyday ill gotten gains. Where once it was considered a paradise of carnivals and sun baked beach beauties, it now simmers like a cesspool about to overflow. As part of a proposed trilogy (including the documentary Bus 174 and the first Elite Squad) director José Padilha wanted this fiery follow up to use art and genre givens to expose the country he calls home. It must have worked with this sizzling sequel, since it was a massive hit and was recently submitted by the country as its official entry for the 2012 Academy Awards (sadly, it did not make the final Best Foreign Film five).
It's been several years since the events of the first film. When a prison riot goes haywire, the head of Rio's Special Police Operations Battalion (or BOPE in the film), Lt. Colonel Nascimento (Wagner Moura), finds himself trapped in a terrible situation. Eventually bumped upstairs by the higher ups, he is forced to face the institutionalized vice that exists between politicians, law enforcement, and the gangs still running the slums. In addition, he is now divorced from his wife who is married to a human rights activist (Irandhir Santos) who hates everything Nascimento stands for and is raising his son to despise him. Soon, our hero is facing influences from all sides, including the criminals on the streets and the equally felonious faces in both the police bureaucracy and legislature.
Unlike his first two films, which seemed to suggest a festering from the ground up, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within is pure trickle down disgrace. Tossing his hero "upstairs" allows Padilha to pursue a more multifaceted kind of corruption,. This is more than mere glad-handing or prowling the favelas for protection money. The Enemy Within argues that the problems facing Brazil come from a freewheeling approach to power. Men who get it don't want to give it up, and find likeminded crooks who will ignore the law for the sake of a slap on the back. By bringing more than just the cops and robbers into the mix, by adding subplots that percolate around the edges of the action, he turns a standard story into an epic. On the downside, this means less time with the violence integral to the plot. On the plus, when said brutality erupts, it's brilliant in its bullet ballet designs.
Indeed, what's most striking about The Enemy Within is how well it balances out the needs of the format with the desire for social commentary. We expect gory action, and we get it, ammunition spent like so much unlaundered cash. But behind closed doors, in the smoke filled back rooms meant to signify the real source of Rio's problems, we get the same level of intensity. While Nascimento may not be walking in with clean hands, he doesn't have his palm upturned either. There's a real desire to find a moral center to all this sin, and Padilha is not afraid to butt heads and name names in the process. Again, this is all fictional, but it feels frighteningly real.
Still, some will see Padiha as piling on, turning what is already a volatile situation into the stuff of Scarface-esque legend. Yet Elite Sqaud: The Enemy Within plays more like something by Scorsese or his benchmark setting ilk. There's a complexity and interwoven efficiency that keeps us connected to the various narrative machinations. Brazil may not welcome its warnings, but for those outside the fray, Padilha's call to action is heady indeed.
Unlike his first two films, which seemed to suggest a festering from the ground up, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within is pure trickle down disgrace. Tossing his hero "upstairs" allows Padilha to pursue a more multifaceted kind of corruption,. This is more than mere glad-handing or prowling the favelas for protection money. The Enemy Within argues that the problems facing Brazil come from a freewheeling approach to power. Men who get it don't want to give it up, and find likeminded crooks who will ignore the law for the sake of a slap on the back. By bringing more than just the cops and robbers into the mix, by adding subplots that percolate around the edges of the action, he turns a standard story into an epic. On the downside, this means less time with the violence integral to the plot. On the plus, when said brutality erupts, it's brilliant in its bullet ballet designs.
Indeed, what's most striking about The Enemy Within is how well it balances out the needs of the format with the desire for social commentary. We expect gory action, and we get it, ammunition spent like so much unlaundered cash. But behind closed doors, in the smoke filled back rooms meant to signify the real source of Rio's problems, we get the same level of intensity. While Nascimento may not be walking in with clean hands, he doesn't have his palm upturned either. There's a real desire to find a moral center to all this sin, and Padilha is not afraid to butt heads and name names in the process. Again, this is all fictional, but it feels frighteningly real.
Still, some will see Padiha as piling on, turning what is already a volatile situation into the stuff of Scarface-esque legend. Yet Elite Sqaud: The Enemy Within plays more like something by Scorsese or his benchmark setting ilk. There's a complexity and interwoven efficiency that keeps us connected to the various narrative machinations. Brazil may not welcome its warnings, but for those outside the fray, Padilha's call to action is heady indeed.
