"The Elite Squad" a violent shoot 'em up

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN (Hollywood Reporter) - In Jose Padilha's crude and violent film "The Elite Squad," the pope is visiting Rio de Janeiro and needs a good night's sleep, so the local police commander sends his crack troops into the closest slum to kill everybody.

Well, not everybody, but all the drug-dealing scum his specially trained officers can find -- and by any means possible, preferably with a high-powered rifle. It means there will be blood and lots of it, all captured by a dizzying hand-held camera racing through some of the worst cases of urban blight on the planet.

Poorly structured and at times incoherent, what box office appeal the film has will rely on its sheer pace and the amount of torture and killing that goes on, so it should do fine. A massive hit in Brazil, it screened here in competition. Domestic distributor Weinstein Co. anticipates a spring release.

The basic assumption of the script by Padilha, Rodrigo Pimentel and Braulio Mantovani is that everyone in Rio is corrupt, especially the authorities. Police officers accept bribes for whatever pays the most: do their jobs or turn a blind eye. They even steal the engines from their own squad cars, sell them and put a piece of junk under the hood instead.

Capt. Nascimento (Wagner Moura) is a cop with integrity, but it's driving him crazy as he risks his life daily battling bad guys in and out of uniform. Plus, he has a pregnant wife at home who wishes he would quit.

He's trying hard to accommodate her, but he needs to find a replacement to take over command of the elite squad. Because everyone else has been compromised, he settles on two rookies who have been best friends since childhood: the brave but hair-triggered Neto (Caio Junqueira) and the cautious but shrewd Matias (Andre Ramiro).

For some reason, their work involves getting second jobs so that Neto works at the police auto shop while Matias goes to law school. Neto's commitment leads him to devise a way of intercepting payoffs drug dealers make to the local commander and using the money to supply the squad cars with desperately needed new parts.

Matias hides the fact that he's a cop from his fellow law students, including pretty Maria (Fernanda Machado) and takes no action when they fire up joints.