Elite Squad

Director: José Padilha.
With: Caio Junqueria, Wagner Moura, Andre Ramiro.
Released: August 8

Martin Scorsese may have finally won an Oscar for Best Director last year, but even his most fervent fans would admit that his recent output hasn't matched his early masterpieces. Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) could be the film those fans have been waiting for. It seethes with guilt, religion, gangsters, urban tension and kinetic violence, as it plunges the viewer into a macho subculture where men are consumed by their dirty work and women are shoved out of the way. There's no doubt that Elite Squad would take its place in the upper ranks of the Scorsese canon if it weren't for one detail: it's not actually directed by him. But while you're watching, you could be forgiven for thinking of it as the best Scorsese film he never made.

One of Brazil's biggest ever box office hits, and the top prize-winner at this year's Berlin Film Festival, Elite Squad is set in 1997 in the slums around Rio de Janeiro. Uzi-waving drug barons control these favelas, and the under-resourced law-enforcement agencies turn a blind eye as long as they can take their share of the profits. Corruption is so rife that there are only three options open to idealistic young rookie policemen Neto (Caio Junqueria) and Matias (Andre Ramiro): "Turn dirty, keep your mouth shut, or engage in war." They both choose option three, and that means convincing Captain Nascimento (Wagner Moura) that they've got what it takes to join Rio's unstoppable shock troops, BOPE. Known as "Skulls" for the skull and crossed guns motif on their black uniforms, BOPE officers always get their man, however many people they have to torture and kill along the way. If Neto and Matias are to make the grade, they have to get through a BOPE boot camp so absurdly harsh that it bears the slogan: "You will never survive!"

Elite Squad doesn't just focus on cops and robbers. It also delves into the lives of the people around them: the mothers who sob when their drug-dealing sons are shot, the students who debate whether the police are more dangerous than the cartels, and the mechanics who get rich by selling engines from new police cars, installing old ones in their place. Director José Padilha is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and co-writer Rodrigo Pimental based the story on his own experiences as a BOPE captain, so Elite Squad has the forensic authenticity of a true account, as well as the adrenaline of a raw thriller. Any more films like this and Padilha will be joining Latin American cinema's elite squad himself.

Nicholas Barber