Title: Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
Director: Jose Padilha
Starring: Wagner Moura, Irandhir Santos, Andre Ramiro, Pedro Van Held, Maria Ribiero, Sandro Rocha, Milhem Cortaz, Andre Mattos, Seu Jorge
A sprawling tale of power, sleaze and ambition in the vein of “City of God,” “The Departed,” “Infernal Affairs” and “The Wire,” writer-director Jose Padilha’s “Elite Squad: The Enemy Within” is a howling, labyrinthine lament against the brawn and fraudulent self-protection of entrenched institutions that could and perhaps should well find a welcome audience amongst #OccupyWallStreet cineastes. Brazil’s official Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film submission, the movie — which is set in Rio de Janeiro and unfolds at the intersection of drugs, crime and high-level governmental corruption — is programmatic, and tipped heavily toward procedural rather than emotional payoffs, but nonetheless still packs an effective, gritty punch.
At the center of the movie is Rio’s Special Police Operations Battalion, or BOPE (so named for its native-language acronym). When a mission to bring an end to a jail riot ends in violence, it puts several men on a trajectory that will eventually result in unlikely new alliances. Andre Mathias (Andre Ramiro) willingly takes the fall for the raid, out of devotion to BOPE, but his superior, Beto Nascimento (Wagner Moura), fails upward, and finds himself installed as Sub-Secretary of Intelligence, where he oversees the city’s wire-tapping programs. Academic and social activist Diogo Fraga (Irandhir Santos), meanwhile, decides to enter politics, winning a position that puts him further at odds with a crooked mayor and the moneyed political-discourse entertainers who prop up their efforts with much on-camera bloviating.
Nascimento is no friend of Fraga’s either. He views him as a pain, and his irritation is exacerbated when Fraga takes up with his ex-wife, and starts influencing his son’s view of Nascimento’s work. Then there’s the fact that Nascimento comes to realize that by strengthening BOPE and bringing low the drug gangs that run the slums, he’s actually only made things easier for the corrupt cops and dirty politicians who are actually pulling the strings from above, including a particularly brutal police captain (Sandro Rocha) who has no qualms about flaunting his thuggishness.
The qualities that most benefit “Elite Squad: The Enemy Within” (it’s actually a sequel to Padilha’s 2007 feature debut, featuring several holdover characters) are also what make it slightly impenetrable at first — its density, and attention to detail. There’s also the matter of Nascimento’s overwritten narration, which serves as an effective hatchet through some of the bureaucratic bramble but also bleeds the movie of the chance for a more rooted emotional connection. Eventually, though, the movie’s pieces start to fit together, and somewhat disparate strands cross paths in interesting ways when old allies become enemies, and vice versa.
Padilha, who got his start in documentary filmmaking, has an obvious eye and ear for the sorts of information that makes this material seem snarlingly current. It’s a fictionalized tale, but one rooted in real scandal as it relates to both BOPE and Brazil’s government, it seems. The film is also properly awash in the shades of grey morality required to tackle a telling of such systemic indecency and corruption, which is quite separate from individual malice. “War is like medicine — it keeps the mind busy,” says Nascimento early on, who comes to realize the double-edged nature of that statement.
NOTE: For more information on the film, visit www.EliteSquad-Movie.com.
Technical: B-
Acting: B
Story: B
Overall: B
Written by: Brent Simon
