Title: Elite Squad 2

Opens: November 11, 2011

Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico” was the most exciting American police drama to come out of the 1970s. The title character is a cop who, unlike all of his colleagues, refuses a share of the drug money that the coups routinely extort from local criminals. Nobody wants to work with Serpico. His problem escalates when he testifies at a Grand Jury hearing about the corruption. The police lead him into a trap: he’s shot in the face by a criminal the moment he breaks into an apartment. Yet when I was a kid, full of innocence, I thought that the only bad cops were the ones who would accept free meals in run-down New York City coffee shops.

In any case, the Serpico situation, the bad apples in a barrel that we are bound to find in large cities, is a kiddie cartoon, a “Cars 2” for example, when compared to what’s going on in Rio. We’re told that José Padilla’s film “Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within” is fiction, but perhaps the studio made sure to put up that disclaimer for fear of their own lives. The police in Rio de Janeiro do not earn anything like the cops in our wealthy country, tempting them to join in with the non-uniformed criminals in the slums, or favelas, located on the hills in an area of the city that tourists never see. What emerges is a tough, brutal film loaded with exquisitely photographed shoot-outs and lots of noise, making it allegedly “the most popular film of all time in South America, out-grossing even “Avatar.” One wonder whether the big movie crowds down South are cheering the corruption itself, the ways that a scant few people are trying to curtail the decay, or simply the thumping, bombastic noise and jagged camera movements that give several sections of the movie the look of a video game. I’d suggest the last choice is the valid one.

Lt. Colonel Nascimento (Wagner Moura) stands in as the story’s central character and its narrator. The opening scene looks suspiciously like the climactic one in “Bonnie and Clyde,” both the opener and the penultimate views reminding us of Jean François Richet’s superior French film, “Mesrine: Killer Instinct” (superior because we get to know the principal gent in depth). As Nascimento tries to duck members of an elite guard, or militia, who have been gunning for him, writer-director Padilla flashes back to a violent revolution in a maximum security prison in which prisoners—themselves divided into three factions based on the drug cartel each identifies—attempt to shoot their way out. When trusted human rights activist Diogo Fraga (Irandhir Santos) enters the prison, he gets the rebel leader to put down his gun, at which point Fraga is betrayed by a member of the Elite Guard, who shoots the rebel dead. Though Fraga is praised by the middle-class community he will represent in the state legislature, the majority of Cariocas cheer the murder, edging the militia to mow down the drug dealers in the slums, and showing their support for the right-wing Governor Gelino (Julio Adrião). Once the Elite Guard does the popular thing, a vacuum is created. Members of the militia, no longer enjoying the source of their ill-begotten cash from the drug dealers, take over sections of the town, shaking down ordinary civilians for the little money they make.

For all the flamboyant action, the film is flawed by its confusion, which could explain the periodic, irritating narration, a cop-out so to speak. A film should speak for itself, should demonstrate clearly who wants what, so that no such narration is needed. What do militia members, led by Major Rocha (Sandro Rocha), hope to gain when the drug money dries up? They raid police arsenals and steal the weapons, they make virtual civil war in areas of Rio that tourists do not see. They seem not to attack the rich, however, but will take extreme action against any who oppose them. The opponents include Nascimento, who now almost regrets turning the militia loose against the druggies, Fraga, a human rights activist who had been trusted by the criminal element, and Clara (Tainá Müller), a journalist who learns ironically that the sword is mightier than the pen.

“Elite Squad 2” is a follow-up to “Elite Squad,” taking place ten years later, but there is absolutely no need to have seen the previous movie first. This is Brazil’s entry into the Oscar competition for films that open in 2011. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Unrated. 118 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – B-