My Name Ain't Johnny

João Guilherme Estrella grew up in Leblon, a wealthy district of Rio de Janeiro, with an intact family and no needs of any kind. In the early 1990s he starts selling cocaine to his friends and within a few years is one of the biggest dealers in the city. Then he is arrested. The interesting thing is the angle. This is not a story about poverty. He does not enter the trade out of necessity but out of boredom and because it came easily. Where Brazilian cinema usually tells crime from the favelas, this film turns the camera round and shows the middle class share of it. Mauro Lima directed, with Selton Mello in the lead, working from a biography by Guilherme Fiúza. The real Estrella went on to work as a musician after prison. Its flaw is that the film likes its subject too much, never shows the consequences of the trade through anybody else, and repeats itself in the second half. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and true crime. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a critical perspective.