“City of Men” begins atop the metaphorically named Dead End Hill in Rio de Janeiro, where a gun-toting gang is lazily contemplating a swim.
With the sun beating down, the gang, led by a charismatic figure named Midnight (Jonathan Haagensen), decides to head down the hill to the beach. Their preparation isn’t gathering towels, but quickly establishing a perimeter of guards and calling the cops to alert them that they’re “coming through.”
Such is the world of Rio’s shantytowns — or “favelas” — where violence travels with ease, as depicted in “City of Men.” The film is a unique companion piece to “City of God,” a minor international hit in 2002 that drew comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” and was nominated for four Academy Awards.
“City of God” was a visceral, stylish tale about a generation of gang life in the favelas, filmed with MTV-like flash by Fernando Meirelles, who has since made “The Constant Gardener.”
“City of God” bristled with the sexiness and destruction of young gang life, but was also almost ridiculously sensational.
“City of Men” is a more humanistic film, primarily focused on the lives of those in the shadow of Rio’s gangs, either enamored by them or cowering from them. Meirelles is here a producer, and gives way to Paulo Morelli.
Morelli directed several episodes of “City of Men” the TV series, which was hugely popular on Brazil’s TV Globo and appeared in the United States on the Sundance Channel. Footage from the series, which ran for four seasons, is used for flashbacks in the film.
Our main characters are two best friends, both turning 18 and fatherless. Many of the characters and locations in the Portuguese-language film are given Americanized names in the subtitles.
Ace (Douglas Silva) has a young child for whom he feels reluctantly responsible. Still, he happily welcomes girls (not his wife) into his security guard post. Wallace (Darlan Cunha) is set on tracking down his father — whom he’s never met — so that he can take his last name.
Above them on the hill, a feud is exploding between Midnight and his lieutenant, Fasto (Eduardo BR). Unable to go out in the streets, Ace soon loses his job; his employer refuses to hear the excuse of “gang war.”
Though Ace and Wallace are friendly with and related to those in the gangs, it’s not the life they want. When the gunshot executing a gangster is heard, as if repeating a manta, Ace says: “One less.”
Like Londoners during the blitz, the residents of Dead End Hill shut themselves in while the fighting rages in the streets and across the rooftops. The hill is a claustrophobic maze of shanties built on top of each other like the Casbah of the Algiers seen in the 1938 film “Pepe le Moko” or 1966’s “The Battle of Algiers.”
The sense of no escape is the same here as in those movies. The neighboring hills — Smoke Hill and Bald Hill — are ruled by their own gangs. Even the sky is filmed as an overexposed white, blasted out by the sun.
In the favelas, everything is intertwined and everyone has allegiances that overlap. At one point, a gang member wonders aloud if everyone is everyone’s cousin.
Wallace’s pursuit of his father digs up skeletons from the past that are almost too neatly parallel to the present. The point is that generations have been fighting the same way for decades, and no one’s winning.
In the end, what Ace and Wallace will decide about manhood and fatherhood is the central thrust of the story and the emotional heart of the film.
With the TV series and now the second film, it’s easy to see the enduring appeal of the favelas to the filmmakers: they’re teaming with vibrancy and conflict. Though the histrionics of “City of Men” are a bit obvious, and it lacks the bravado of “City of God,” it’s ultimately a more rewarding film.