Sponsor PFCOne
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
Loading ...
Reco of the Month - Tropa de Elite
“In the dark depths of the nether world, for wanderers searching for the ultimate prize clues are everything”.
Oh well!! that was as cheesy as it can get..
:-)
but couldn’t resist.
Cheesiness apart, it is so subliminally true!
for all those geeks with cool names stalking the net for music, movie and the like…
(porn? Nah… porn is passé..)
everything you get is from that passing comment at a forum..
a chance chat remark…
a ‘recommended site’ link on a website purporting to have it all!!!….
all of which eggs you to the darkest part of the net in search of that treasure trove.
(see the treasure is guarded so well that it keeps changing location every week or so- think saddam being whisked away for fear of an american attack).
Its therefore supremely important to rummage around every nook and corner as you wander about..
you just might hit a trail. thats what happened here.
so there i was, at 3 in the morning, groggy eyes and all, looking at the flickering comments on the screen
“the best brazilian flick EVER!!”
“a film seen by millions which has never been released”"
“worthy successor of City of god”
the news was all around…
this was the kind of graffiti I saw painted on most dingy dark forum sites sharing movies and warez,
bloggers, netizens were raving about it
i was skeptical since such accolades are normal and usually the work of desperate geeks looking for rapidshare brownie points…
but one thing piqued me - the City of god comparison…
an imdb search revealed further surprises..
9.5 user rating!!!! (that too from a 2000 odd user count- it has stabilised to 8.5 since then)
not released yet!!!! (subsequently released in oct 07)
but the movie was nowhere to be found (the links keep getting deleted)
then finally out of the blue i get a pristine bootleg copy..
but aaaaaaaRgH no subtitles…
soon after incomplete subs…
then a stranger from brazil chips in with the full subtitle file….
finally i get to watch it!!!
after 4 months of waiting, racing after dodgy torrents, broken links, incomplete and corrupt file downloads…
chasing a rumor floating around on the net has never been so fruitful.
all this for and about a movie which hasn’t had a proper official release .. yet ( at least internationally).
‘Tropa de Elite” a.k.a The Elite Squad a.k.a BOPE
so whats this one about? i aint telling!!!! (well not everything)
this aint a review..
a reco… comprende?
But here’s some info i digged up during the ’search’
Imdb trivia-
# During the shooting of the film, a van with 90 firearms (30 real and 60 prop guns) was robbed in the hill of Chapéu Mangueira. Teams from the local police stormed the Favela Pavão-Pavãozinho, in Copacabana, to recover the guns, but the operation was only partially successful.
# This film was already a best-seller almost three months before its official release. Illegal copies of what the director called the “3rd cut” flooded the streets of all major capitals in Brazil, for the equivalent of five dollars apiece. Criminal investigation revealed that the original DVD was robbed in the Company Drei Marc, which does the subtitles. According to estimates at least three million people watched the bootleg version, which is one million more than the biggest Brazilian film that year (A Grande Família - O Filme) managed during its theatrical run.
# The final version was slightly different from the pirated one. One scene was added and the narration was altered. But the director never stated that it was motivated by the piracy issues.
You might ask what’s so different about a movie about crime corruption and a vigilante police squad set in Rio. haven’t we seen it all earlier? not like this mate… nope!
Helmed by José Padilha and scripted by Rodrigo Pimentel, Tropa da Elite tells us the story of the slums of Rio - dangerous drug infested and inimitably violent
the story of the savage criminals and the BOPE, the elite squad of police officers who kill and maim at will to maintain status quo (Rodrigo Pimentel, himself is a 12 year veteran of BOPE).
Padilha is known for his seminal docu-drama ( i term it so cuz of the use of real documentary footage for his film) Ônibus 174 (still on the download list).
Tropa de Elite - i hate to compare- is as good as City of God. It reverses the POV from the criminal to the policia and leaves you with the same exhilarating feeling as a Satya (well with a tad more satisfaction perhaps)
This time around Padilha narrates a fictional story in pure Cinéma-vérité style. Even though a work of fiction, it becomes increasingly apparent, midway through the movie, why all the controversy erupted. It is based on real life conversations of police officers with a psychiatrist and it provides a scathing critique on the basic framework of Rio society - between the haves and the have-nots and space between them teeming with soldiers from both sides.
The mindset of the protagonist and narrator, a senior officer of the BOPE, epitomizes the precarious balance the city of Rio finds itself in - at the edge of chaos. To say Rio is a dangerous city would be an understatement. It also goes without saying that filming such a volatile story is fraught with risk and so it was-
” We had part of the crew kidnapped, guns stolen, police raiding the slum, that almost killed the film and our costs soared” – Jose Paditha
move over Phantom and Pirates from all over, the skull and crossbones has just found its rightful heir!!
22 Responses to “Reco of the Month - Tropa de Elite”
Leave a Reply
Our Comments Policy : The following kinds of comments are troll capped, blocked and/or commenter's identity reported publicly: Verbal abuse, personal attacks, hate statements, spam, trolls, advertising. Please assist us in keeping the comments clean. Use the contact form to let us know if you find unwarranted comments on PFC. Thank you.
- Khamosh : Once upon a time VVChopra had made this Thriller
- Pusan: Jahar Kanungo on AFC and his Half Truth
- A wednesday - a 90 minute thriller –really.
- Movie Quiz I
- Soundtrack Review: ‘Avakai Biryani’
- Movie Q
- A wednesday - a 90 minute thriller –re
- PFCOne 2008 : List of En
- Guru Dutt : Gen
- Soundtrack Review: ‘Avakai Biryani&#x
Recent Posts:
Hottest Today:
Hmm… interesting! I have a friend returnin from Brazil next month. If all that is indeed true and it is available on the streets, might just get lucky!
And what was that about Syd being the ‘PfC treasury HQ’? How? when? Where?
And my travails to a hunt a movie begin again. Thanks for digging that out… love south American film.
Hers’s hoping that jose sticks to Latino films and does not get to hollywood!
Bus 174 was fantastic. will look fwd to this. what’s holding up the Official and INTL release?
Dpac
Loved Bus 174, so looking fwd to this thanx.
Brazil churns out amazing directors:
Salles/Meirelles/Waddington etc
and Padilha/Padilla is no exception.
not on Netflix? WTF???
found it interesting that the protagonist of tropa de elite is named captain nascimento.. which incidentally, was the name of the hijacker in bus 174 (sandro do nascimento).. gonna put 174 on my q.. thx for this recco dpac
awesome movie! on a side note though, the person who did the *original rip* has been caught recently:
http://www.policiacivil.rj.gov.br/noticia.asp?id=4236
“but one thing piqued me - the City of god comparison…”
hehe every other portugu
anand- look for the ‘clues’ you will know..
ravptor- i hope otherwise.. i hope more people like jose churn up hollywood..
dabba- have no clue! hollywood should have lapped it up by now. TDE has all the necessary ingredients for hollywood
kavita- recent ‘discovery’ a couple of KIDILAM Chilean and Argentine movies
oz- nothing even on rotten tomatoes
striker- yep nascimento is the name of the hijacker (he is as himself in the archival footage). havent seen the Bus yet.
wb bhaaaaaaai!!!! of all people you have seen it??!!! naughty baaaay :-)
i was riding on the conspiracy theory that the makers themselves leaked the bootleg version till recently.
Thanks for the reco DPAC
I caught ONIBUS 174 few months back by mistake on Cable & was hooked to it.
Let me reccomend another great Brazilian film in the same genre - Carandiru
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293007/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvR7tYIzSZk
Dpac
You should have uploaded the trailers in your post. Since you did not. I’ll just put the links here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoxrdMukQu0
:)>-
mainak
:-) waiting for carandiru subs mate
wrt TDE - have provided the link to official site…
trailers are there .. so didnt bother with youtube
@ DPac -
Can you do a post on the state of animation/visual FX/graphics industry in India, along with names of studios and capabilities, and hopw they compare with the rest of the world….
Or am I sniffing the wrong crotch?
Dabba-
thats has been on the works for a few months now..
(so was this post)
but not on the indian scene though..
and not at all a comparison..
been away for too long to make it a comprehensive post on india fx scene..
hopefully the comments section will take care of that
but it will be interesting nevatheless
Throw the dog a bone. Will wait for it.
dunno if i have shared this before
but this should keep u alive till i finally get a post up (there are quite a few in line mate)
http://motionographer.com/
Shit how did I miss Babenco….:(
thanx mainak.
Any idea if it will be available in Mumbai? Even if it is a pale comparison to the City of God, would love to watch it.
if this film is compaired with city of god then………. but is it going to relesied in india?
Hi DPac,
I own a copy of Tropa and am glad to find a fellow admirer of the film. I own City of God as well, but am not drawing any comparison here because both the films stand on their own feet. What I really loved about Tropa, besides the “coming of age” bit (if you can call it that) of one of the characters is the tete-a-tete among the students inside a classroom. It really provides the “balance” in a film such as this which could, otherwise, have easily been branded into a Brazilian version of “An Officer and a Gentleman”. Love these apparently unknown films, which are so full of surprises.
[...] Cesar Charlone and Walter Carvalho. One of the most brilliant films I have seen in 2008 is “Tropa de Elite” which recently won the Golden Bear at Cannes. Last year I fell in love with an absolute gem [...]
u ‘own’ a copy rupak??!!!! awesome…