Elite Squad

José Padilha arrived from documentary; his first feature was Bus 174. Rodrigo Pimentel, who worked on it, had served as a captain in BOPE between 1994 and 2000, and co-wrote both the source book Elite da Tropa and this screenplay. The third name on the script is Bráulio Mantovani, who wrote City of God. The shape matters here. Nascimento narrates throughout, yet the long middle belongs to two rookies, Neto and Matias, not to him. Matias studies law at night, and the second target surfaces there: the students dealing weed on campus and the friends running an NGO inside the favela are supplied by the same trafficker. Anyone who came for raids waits a while through that passage. The narrating voice justifies everything it shows and the film supplies no counter voice, so the calibration is left to the viewer. Months before the opening, in August 2007, a work print leaked from the company handling the subtitles and spread across Brazil on pirated discs. It won the Golden Bear at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival. A good fit if you want the defence of torture delivered in the first person and never corrected on screen. Not for anyone expecting Nascimento at the centre; the film hands its middle to two rookies and returns to him only late.