Brazilian director blasts "Elite Squad" critics

By Pedro Fonseca

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian director Jose Padilha, winner of the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival for his movie "Elite Squad," hit back at critics on Monday with all the force of its antihero, police captain Nascimento.

"Elite Squad" (Tropa de Elite) tells the story of a police special forces unit that uses brutal tactics, including torture and executions, to combat drug gangs in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

Critics in Berlin were divided over the film, with some praising it as a powerful story of the moral compromises police accept in order to survive and others saying it glorified their often ruthless methods.

Variety called it a "recruitment film for fascist thugs."

"The Variety critic was particularly stupid," Padilha told a news conference in Rio de Janeiro. "To call the film fascist is to ignore what the word fascist means."

"You only need to look in the dictionary. You have to be stupid, not to know what fascist is."

The reception at the film festival, where it won the Golden Bear award, mirrored a controversy in Brazil when it was released late last year.

While many saw it as an expose of police violence, a number of others lauded their tactics and said that was the best way to deal with criminals.

Capitain Nascimento, the squad leader in the movie, became a cult hero to the chagrin of filmmakers, who said they wanted to show excessive police violence is as bad as crime itself.

In one of the most gruesome scenes, police torture a young suspect, putting a plastic bag over his blood-covered head, to obtain information. They then kill the youth.

"In Germany we didn't have a feeling of negative criticism of the film. We felt the film was going really well. It was only later on the Internet we saw the opposite," Padilha said.

"Elite Squad" is the latest in a series of acclaimed Brazilian films showing Rio's ugly side, following the Oscar-nominated "City of God" about gangs in a Rio slum.

Human rights groups criticize Rio's police and especially the elite squad, the BOPE special unit. According to official figures, police in the metropolitan Rio killed 1,214 suspects described as "resisting arrest" last year, 22 percent more than in 2006.

(Reporting by Pedro Fonseca; Writing by Angus MacSwan; editing by Todd Eastham)