In this day and age, any sufficiently successful film is almost certain to receive a sequel. The logic of the modern film industry is inexorable: a hit generates an audience, an audience generates expectations, and expectations generate the demand for more of the same — or at least something recognisably akin to it. Brazilian cinema was not the exception to this rule. Its greatest triumph in the first decade of the twenty-first century — the visceral action thriller Elite Squad — had its sequel three years later, titled Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (Tropa de Elite 2: O Inimigo Está no Meio). The film reunited its director José Padilha, as well as co-writers Bráulio Mantovani and Rodrigo Pimentel, with its main star Wagner Moura, who returns in the role of Roberto Nascimento, the high-ranking officer of the Battalion of Special Police Operations (BOPE) of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The creative team behind the first film remained intact, and with it the expectation that the sequel would maintain the same level of quality, intensity, and unflinching social commentary that had made its predecessor such a remarkable anomaly in Brazilian cinema.
The plot is set roughly thirteen years since the events of the first film, and begins when Nascimento is ambushed on the street by assassins. As his vehicle is sprayed by hails of bullets, he begins narrating the series of events that led him to this point — a narrative device that, as in the first film, frames the entire story as an extended flashback punctuated by Nascimento's world-weary voiceover. Nascimento originally wanted to trade the command of BOPE for a desk job and leave the unit in the hands of his dedicated protégé Captain Mathias (André Ramiro), but his wife Rosane (Maria Ribeiro) leaving him with their young son made him stay, earning him the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the process. His career appears to come crashing down during a seemingly routine operation to end a prison riot, which succeeds due to Mathias taking out Beirada (played by Seu Jorge), the vicious leader of the Comando Vermelho drug-dealing gang. The problem for Nascimento is that the killing occurred in the presence of Diogo Fraga (played by Irandhir Santos), a history teacher and human rights activist who had been sent there to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Fraga, waving the bloody shirt in front of TV cameras, accuses BOPE of cold-blooded murder, and Nascimento is about to be removed from command. Yet his removal is complicated by the influential tabloid TV host Gregorio Fortunato (André Mattos), who hails Nascimento as a crime-fighting hero. The administration of Governor Gelino (Julio Adrião) solves this problem by having Nascimento promoted to undersecretary for public security, giving him exactly the cosy but unimportant desk job he had always wanted. It is Mathias who ultimately pays the price, being booted out of BOPE into the regular military police and again having as his superior the corrupt commander Fábio Barbosa (Milhem Cortaz), now promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
As years pass, Nascimento's humiliation is exacerbated by Rosane actually going to live with Fraga, and his own teenage son Rafael (Pedro Van-Hel) taking the side of his left-wing stepfather. Nascimento finds comfort in work, and, despite an initial inability to adapt to the office, gradually uses his position to continue his war against the favela gangs and advance the cause of his BOPE comrades. His efforts appear to bear fruit, with the gangs slowly disappearing, but, ironically, this brings an even greater calamity. The vacuum is filled by another, more sinister force — Captain Rocha (Sandro Rocha), leader of the militias, paramilitary vigilante groups made up of former or off-duty policemen that simply take over all criminal activity in the favelas and serve as the "muscle" for the political establishment. Rocha's efforts to establish complete control and eradicate the last remaining gangs would, inadvertently, bring the militias into conflict with Nascimento, setting the stage for the film's central confrontation.
Elite Squad 2 was, in strictly commercial terms, an even more spectacular success than the first film. It became the most watched film in the history of Brazilian cinema, beating the box office of the likes of Cameron's Avatar in the domestic market. This could be attributed to high expectations, the great popularity of the first film, and the producers' successful efforts to avoid the problems of internet leaks that had plagued the distribution of its predecessor. Where the first Elite Squad had suffered from a mass online leak shortly before its premiere — which, remarkably, did not prevent it from becoming a massive hit — the sequel was protected by a more disciplined distribution strategy, and the Brazilian public repaid that discipline with their wallets.
Yet Elite Squad 2 failed to achieve a similar level of success among critics, although its general tone is more in line with the left-wing liberal sentiments that might be expected from those quarters. The film is much darker, more cynical, and more depressive than its predecessor, showing that the never-ending cycle of poverty, crime, and violence is caused less by the gangs themselves and more by the blurred line between organised crime and politics — what Nascimento in his narration calls "the system." Where the first film was criticised by some Western critics for its unapologetic adoption of the police perspective and its portrayal of human rights activists as hypocrites, the sequel shifts its aim higher up the chain, targeting the political establishment itself. One might have expected this to endear the film to the progressive intelligentsia, but the response was muted — perhaps because the film's cynicism is too totalising, its pessimism too thoroughgoing, to offer the kind of hopeful, redemptive message that critics tend to favour.
This is best seen in the film's central ironic twist. At the very beginning, Nascimento — a capable but ruthless law enforcement soldier who, like many policemen, takes a right-wing view of policing — sees Fraga as his very antithesis and personal enemy. The character, based on the real-life personality of Rio de Janeiro left-wing politician Marcelo Freixo, is an almost parodical incarnation of the "bleeding heart liberal" stereotype: a man who waves bloody shirts at cameras, who champions the rights of criminals over the safety of citizens, and who embodies everything that a man like Nascimento despises. Yet, by the end of the film, Nascimento is forced to see him as an ally — the only honest man in a system so thoroughly corrupted that the old ideological distinctions no longer apply. The enemy is no longer the drug dealer or the human rights activist; the enemy is within.
Padilha generally takes the narrative formula of the first film — a prologue that sets up the narration, which then, through a series of vignettes and ironic commentary, shows how characters evolve through the years, with the brutal finale looking almost like an afterthought. The structure works, but it also means that the film's pacing is somewhat uneven, with long stretches of political manoeuvring and character development punctuated by sudden bursts of violence that, while effective, lack the sustained intensity of the first film's set pieces.
Yet inevitable comparisons between the two films show that the first one is better — more compact, more comprehensive, less burdened with complicated politics and the introduction of new characters. Some of these new characters are sometimes too grotesque, like Fortunato, the tabloid TV host whose bombastic championing of Nascimento feels more like caricature than character. The "militias," too, are a phenomenon which looks specifically Brazilian in nature, and could have been handled with some more exposition for international audiences.
There is also a brief scene where Padilha indulges in dark humour — militia thugs jokingly referencing Hamlet while dispatching the charred remains of their victims — which is tonally at odds with the otherwise very serious film. It is a moment that feels imported from a different, more irreverent picture, and it briefly breaks the grim, documentary-like spell that Padilha has otherwise so carefully maintained. One can see what Padilha was reaching for — a Pulp Fiction-esque absurdity that underscores the banality of evil — but the execution does not quite land, and the scene sits awkwardly within the film's broader register.
The epilogue is also somewhat anti-climactic, although in line with the realistic tone of the film, which shows that certain social problems cannot be solved easily, even by such a capable and determined protagonist as Nascimento. Where the first film ended with a satisfying, symbolic act of completion — Mathias taking the shot that signalled his full transformation — the sequel ends on a note of exhausted resignation, with Nascimento having survived his ordeal but having accomplished little of lasting consequence. The system endures. The militias endure. The corruption endures. It is a brave choice, and an honest one, but it leaves the viewer with a sinking feeling rather than the cathartic release that the first film provided.
Elite Squad 2 benefits a great deal from Padilha's steady direction, great cinematography, and an excellent cast. Moura, in particular, continues to impress as Nascimento, conveying the character's growing disillusionment and quiet desperation with a subtlety that matches the broader, more physical performance of the first film. The supporting cast is uniformly strong, with Irandhir Santos standing out as Fraga, managing to make a character who could have been insufferably preachy into something genuinely sympathetic. The cinematography, as in the first film, captures the favelas and the corridors of power with equal immediacy, blurring the visual distinction between the two worlds in a way that reinforces the film's thematic concerns.
Its success helped both Padilha and Moura to continue their respective careers in Hollywood, mainly by reuniting on Narcos, one of the most popular television series of its time. The credibility and international recognition that the Elite Squad films provided proved that Brazilian cinema could not only tell its own stories but could also tell them in a way that resonated globally. Padilha's subsequent career — which included the ill-fated RoboCop remake before the more sustained success of Narcos — and Moura's transition into international stardom, most notably as Pablo Escobar in that same series, can be traced directly to the foundation laid by these films.
In the final analysis, Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within is a film that reaches higher than its predecessor but does not always grasp what it reaches for. Its ambitions are greater — it wants to diagnose an entire political system rather than merely depict a single operation — but its execution is sometimes hampered by the complexity of its subject matter and the sheer number of characters and factions it must juggle. It is a darker, more cerebral film than the first Elite Squad, and in some respects a more important one, but it is also a less satisfying piece of cinema. The first film was a tight, kinetic genre piece that happened to carry a serious social message; the sequel is a serious social message that sometimes struggles to find its genre. For all that, it remains a remarkable achievement — a sequel that refuses to merely repeat its predecessor and instead pushes its themes into darker, more uncomfortable territory. That it does not entirely succeed in all of its ambitions is perhaps less a failure of the film itself than a reflection of the intractability of the problems it depicts.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
==
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Leodex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9
