The movie starts with a narrator, Captain Roberto Nascimento (Wagner Moura), and he briefly explains how the police and the drug lords of Rio de Janeiro cooperate with each other (policemen collect a weekly bribe to deliberately ignore the drug trafficking and related crimes in the slums) so much that it is unknown who is the bigger criminal, the police or the drug lords.In medias res, Major Oliveira (Marcelo Valle), a police officer of and his colleagues are shown driving through Morro da Babilônia towards a baile funk to collect the bribe. Nascimento and his other colleagues are also shown in their armored car. Meanwhile, novice police officers André Matias (André Ramiro) and Neto Gouveia (Caio Junqueira) are shown riding a motorcycle at the same favela, though not with the other officers, and with Neto armed with a sniper. Once they make it to a vantage point, Neto uses a sniper rifle to check on the police team as they stop near the party and talk to some "high-ranking" drug traffickers. Neto shoots one of them and provokes a deadly gunfight between police and thugs, both sides unaware of where the bullet came from, forcing Mathias and Neto to flee the scene. Nascimento leads his colleagues from BOPE, Rio Special Police Department, heading to the shootout to interfere and save the officers.Six months earlier, showing Nascimento and his wife Rosane (Maria Ribeiro) during her pregnancy of his first child. Realizing it will not be possible to be such an absent father when his child is born, Nascimento decides to search for a successor for his role as a captain. This coincides with an operation he will have to lead in Morro dos Prazeres in order to secure the location so that Pope John Paul II can spend the night at an Archbishop's home, located near the slum buildings and favelas. The operation will require daily trips into the favela filled with heavily armed drug lords, and Nascimento is initially against it, but is forced by his superiors to accept it, due to Pope's regards and requirements which cannot be annulled.Meanwhile, Neto's and Matias' debut as police officers take place. Both are honest officers and try to stay out of corruption, but are soon disillusioned by their corrupt superiors.
While Neto starts at the police auto mechanic shop as a supervisor, being in charge of fixing run-down police cars and bikes but with no education about cars, Matias is responsible of listening to the police radios and registering every complaint in his small archive office. Both share a small apartment in Rio and are long-time friends and flatmates. Besides working at the local police, Matias is a Law student at "the best Law university of Rio", according to Nascimento, where his classmates are shown as "young and spoiled" kids that tend to see the police as a repressive unit, and are heavy weed addicts. He soon befriends Roberta (Fernanda de Freitas), Edu (Paulo Viela) and Maria (Fernanda Machado) (whom he later dates). All three work at a NGO that takes care of poor children from a local favela. Roberta dates Rodrigues, who helps Maria administrate the organization, besides representing a senator who sponsors the NGO. Edu also works for Baiano (Fábio Lago), the local dealer, by selling marijuana at his university, to supply the NGO with the money and protection from Baiano's so-called "Red Army". All of them are unaware of Matias's position as an officer (as he keeps it a secret).Neto is soon bored of working at the mechanic, becoming stressed but fails to be transferred to another department. By riding with his superior Captain Fabio (Milhem Cortaz), he learns about corruption schemes adopted by police officers – commonly, small establishments owners pay periodic bribes to the police to have their presence in front of their places, so they are safer. Another scheme, learned by Matias, is the relocation of dead bodies to other battalion's areas, so that one's criminal statistics will artificially decrease and leave less work to the department charged to the battalion. It is also implied that private tow-trucks are in orders of several superiors to collect money.Willing to raise some money to fix many police cars at once, Neto build a plan to steal the bribe Oliveira collects periodically from the drug lords and asks Matias and Fabio to help them. Fabio declines the offer, since he will not have a share in it. The duo succeeds in stealing the money, but Oliveira is unhappy with the events and wants a payback for losing his money. However, he thinks Matias and Neto were only following orders from Fabio. By dragging the latter to the baile funk in Babilônia (shown at the beginning), he plans to have him killed there for fooling him, but Neto and Matias follow the police car on the motorcycle, and arrive at the vantage point to protect Fabio. Neto keeps Fabio at gunpoint, and due to a misunderstanding (he is thinking that a dealer is pulling a gun), shoots the dealer, provoking the gunfight. Fabio escapes from his colleagues and shoots them from behind a bar. ...To be continue
No comments:
Post a Comment