Done! The second part was more enjoyable than the first one. A few days ago I watched Elite Squad (2007) and now I am writing the second part of it which was released in 2010 but the story has a gap of seven years. This is a Brazilian crime-thriller duology directed by Jose Padilha. I had to watch it with English subtitles.
We have seen in the first part that the movie shows the drug trades in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Nascimento, a BOPE Captain, eradicates those illegal businesses and also looks for a suitable replacement for his post. That was a successful one in my point of view and here comes the second one. The very first scenes show us Nascimento being ambushed outside of a hospital in his car. Did he die or not was a mystery and the story before this incident starts to roll.
BOPE was a special militia force in Rio de Janeiro. Nascimento became a colonel and we got to see Andre Matias as a part of BOPE, who was recruited in the first one after a lot of hardship. We also get Nascimento as the narrator of the movies and he describes how he turned BOPE into a war machine to eradicate drug trades in the slums of Rio. We got a glance at that in the first part too. But this time the movie focused on a new aspect that we can sense a little from the name itself. This time politics end up on his way, the whole system was corrupted and he was into a mess. Dishonest cops and politicians were becoming the direct extortionists into the slums for drug trades, high taxes, votes, etc. By the time Nascimento could figure out who the real enemies were he had to pay a high price. His family had to pay a price too which made the war personal for him.
There was another interesting and prime character named Diago Fraga. He is a human rights activist and was later elected to Rio's State Assembly. His relationship with Nascimento was not good because his wife got married to Fraga which was out of the story. Also, an incident at the beginning of the movie triggers Fraga against Nascimento. Fraga was trying to bring out the truths before the state whether it's for the benefit of the drug lords or to others or against the high powers.
Well, these two crime thriller movies served me pretty well. I did expect some more action scenes but the story didn't let me down in that matter in its own way. The way the story was moving and the narrator was pretty amazing to describe the situation with his voice. Though I didn't understand his language, his emotions and the subtitles fulfilled that completely. They could have bought the third part of it because there are a lot of scopes to expand the story. If you watch or have already watched the film then you may notice the ending was pretty straight forward and it left scope for another part too. Well, that's my personal opinion, they may have another logic too.
So overall I would say this one is a must-watch film as I have said before. Personally, I would love to rate this one 8.5 out of 10. If you love to watch crime/thriller genre films then go for it. Happy Watching.
