I expected this to be a sequel to City of God, but evidently it is a conclusion of sorts to the Brazilian TV series that was created as a result of the first film. Certinly the style of film-making is different to City of God, but its subject matter, setting and gritty style are all pretty much the same.Douglas Silva and Darlan Cunha play friends on the cusp of manhood who, as they approach their eighteenth birthdays, dwell upon the meaning and importance of fatherhood. Laranjinha (Cunha) misses the father he has never known who was imprisoned for murder before his son was born, while Ace (Silva) is struggling to come to terms with fatherhood. Ace decides to help Laranjinha track down his father (now released from prison) but it is a decision that will threaten to destroy their friendship.The main plot takes place amidst a feudal gang war which, in all honesty, is far more compelling than the domestic problems of the two young protagonists and the film's most compelling performance comes from Jonathan Haagensen as gang leader Midnight. Set amongst the narrow, maze-like alleyways of the Rio slums, it is this gangland storyline that feels both more authentic and appropriate than the problems of the boys, the resolution of which feels too rushed in the film's final reel.The quality of the film-making is beyond dispute, however. Given that this is the final act of a TV series that ran for many years it is to the writers' credit that the viewer isn't confused by the events described or by the references to an unfamiliar past.

Amidst poverty, racism, drugs, guns and violence, the absence of schools, hospitals, formal employment or government assistance, life in Rio's favelas is a constant challenge.Here, we watch two young men grow up fatherless. Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha) is trying to find his father as he turns 18 so that his name can be on his identity papers. Acerola (Douglas Silva), his best friend, is dealing with his own fatherhood. He has to care for his son while his wife goes to work in another city as a babysitter so they can get a house.While Wallace (Laranjinha) is dealing with his father, who was recently released from prison, Ace (Acerola) is mixed up in a battle over turf on the hill. They find that their fathers are intertwined, and there are some tense moments when the two deal with their friendship.The cinematography was beautiful and the sound during the gun battles was excellent. It seemed more like a war zone than a city, but that is a fact of life for the millions who live there.

In this feature film adaptation of the Brazilian TV-Series City of Men, story is taking us to the early beginnings of the gangs of Rio De Janeiro in City of God. However, gangs are no more underdogs. They erect a reign of anarchy only because they don't have nothing else to do, and because they feel good when they commit anarchy. Their families are torn apart, schools are on strike, communities are swept by crime. Gangs are rebels without a cause, anyhow.Since these people are ignorant, they are fooled and taken in easily to crime. As the story progresses through an 18-year-old kid's look of life, he is seeking his father who has left home when he's born. Then he finds out that his father was a criminal and currently is a fugitive. Even though the kid still chose his father's side and got against his dearest friend.The plot is in the hands of an adapted screenplay which is inadequate to bear it. There is a terminated friendship between two old mucker, and one is shot by the other. Also in order to possess a hill which has a good scenic sea view, two friends get against each other just to have more injunctive power and authority over the same community of their own. Here the screenplay should have been effective, but it's not. So we fall into clatters of people defending their thoughts. We never find out the truth which side is right, which side is not; and there is no clarity. Both sides cannot be right at the same time, and if both sides are wrong then the story is self-defeating, and thus the story-teller is wrong, and if the story-teller is wrong, then we are mistaken to watch this complete nonsense.There is a dead end story you're running into. Leaders of the two enemy gangs are getting killed, at the end. Revenges are turned into vendettas. While a little dispute became a war, in the middle of the war, our leading role heroes are escaping out of it, with an infant boy.Once he has already seen the grim face of the war, Baby Clayton will never stop crying.

This sepia-sunbleached feature derives from, and features the same main characters as, the eponymous 2002-2005 Brazilian TV series about (mostly) boys in the "favela" hill ghettos above Rio for which Morelli did some of the writing and directing. The series, starring Darlan Cunha as Laranjinha (Wallace) and Douglas Silva as Acerola (Ace) --growing up from year to year and episode to episode--sort of grew out of the Fernando Meirelles/Kátia Lund film, 'City of God,' which in turn was based on Paulo Lins' tumultuous and partly autobiographical novel about three decades in the slums and the involvement of youth as dealers, assassins, and victims. Actually the Ace/Wallace characters as young teenagers, always played by Silva and Cunha, predate 'City of God' by two years; they appeared in a short film called 'Palace II' in 2000. The history of these films and stories is as intricate as the world they depict. Douglas Silva was the prepubescent tough in 'City of God' known by he moniker Dadinho--Lil' Dice.'City of Men' is warmer and more intimate than the original film. 'City of God' has been both admired for its virtuosity--it's full of tours de force of visual violence and equally brilliant feats of rapid storytelling--and condemned as reveling too much in blood and gore, making teenage killers who terrorize neighborhoods into little glamor boys. That's quite true. It's unfortunately also true that in the ghettos of Rio as of other places such as the USA, young gun-toting drug dealers are the sexy local pop stars. Maybe the earlier film fails to take a sufficiently clear moral stand, or too much reflects the viewpoints of the young favela males it depicts. Nonetheless it's exhilarating film-making. Paradoxically, it also has a more positive arc than 'City of Men,' because its hero works his way out of the slums and into mainstream Rio de Janeiro to become a photojournalist. In 'City of Men,' nothing like that happens. Instead, there is a difficult reconciliation between the two boys, on the brink of eighteen, despite a stunning revelation about their lost fathers, and one of the fathers comes back into the picture and, reluctantly at first, chooses to be a warm presence in the life of his son. Both of the boys endure moments of terrible loneliness and isolation, which reveal how isolating the world of shifting and dangerous loyalties and hills fought for and lost is for a boy who in the first place lacks parents. But the focus is on the reconciliations.In the TV series, the boys are in school. They face difficulties even showing up, and only one of them, Ace (Silva) really hits the books (he's also fascinated by guns of all kinds). Laranjinha is closer to turning into a young hood.Thugh the new movie 'City of Men' is less specific than the TV series (judging by the DVD collections of episodes that I've seen) and suffers a bit by comparison with either it or 'City of God,' the vibrancy of the life on offer in all these films is still unmistakable, as well as the attractiveness of the young actors, the warmth of the world evoked--and vernacular swiftness that of the filming and editing, which somehow is both relaxing and unnerving.Wallace/Laranjinha is trying to find out who his real father is; he doesn't want "unknown" to be on the place for "father" on his papers. Acerola knows his father is dead, and he wants to know what happened. He's faced with the local problem from the other side. His wife Cris (Camila Monteiro) keeps leaving their toddler son Clayton (Vinicius Oliveira) with him to take care of. He doesn't want to accept the responsibility. But if he reneges on it, he'll leave Clayton in the same place he and Wallace are in. Ace abandons Clayton on the beach early on when Madrugadão (Midnight, Jonathan Haagensen), the gang leader of the hill where they live, risks assassination to descend on a super-hot day for a swim in the ocean. He also turns some flashy cartwheels and shows off his spectacular pecs. Madrugadão, like Wallace (i.e. Darlan Cunha), is handsome and charismatic. Ace is so childish he forgets his own son; but he rushes back and finds him. And when Cris gets a job in the wealthier city of São Paulo, Ace, with great difficulty, forces himself to take on the responsibility of raising Clayton.Wallace (perhaps a bit too easily) finds his father, a bearded man named Heraldo (Rodrigo dos Santos), who has just gotten out of prison after serving fifteen years of a twenty-year sentence--for murder. Heraldo's beard cannot conceal the fact that he is not very mature. He hasn't shouldered the responsibilities of being a man. But he also carries the weight of suffering and gratitude.When rival gang leader Fasto (Eduardo "BR" Piranha) takes over Midnight's territory on Dead End Hill, a new gang war breaks out right in the middle of Ace and Wallace's journey of self-discovery.'City of Men' is a more tender, individual and grownup story than 'City of God'; from what I've seen of the TV series it grows out of, it's less specific and less witty. It works as a kind of antidote to the amorality one feels in 'City of God,' and its warmth is touching. Nor is it visually ineffective, or its sense of the milieu less rich--except. Except that it quite lacks the momentum and adrenaline-rush brilliance of 'City of God's' virtuoso film-making and editing, or the rich range of minor characters the latter has. It is a little bit meandering, and its fast jump-cut slides from scene to scene sometimes seem out of place. As the AV Club reviewer says, much has been gained in this new film, but much has been lost as well. Still 'City of Men' is well worth watching.