Movie Review SSJ

It is not easy to come across a film that can satisfy different tastes at the same time, “Elite Force” belongs to this category, want to see the violence, the violence is realistic and hard; want to see the plot, the plot is tense and easy to understand; want to see the type of men, there are cool Bi’s cool brother; want to deep down, the social issues reflected in it and thought-provoking, in short, the film is addictive, a weave of violence and humanity, rational and I was impressed by this film, a film that intertwines violence and humanity, reason and madness.

This is a Brazilian film set in Rio de Janeiro, a city that is passionate, luscious, and at the same time made into a crime-ridden place. While the famous Brazilian film “City of God” is about the gang battles in Rio’s favelas, this “Elite Force” takes a different perspective, showing the complexity and dilemma of Rio’s crime-ridden problems from the police side of the symbol of order, especially the growing experience of the two young officers in the film is more saddening. Rio police elite unit BOPE of Captain Nas Simunto and two police rookies Neto, Mathias is the main character of this film, the captain is the master of the team, but tired of the life of fighting and killing, want to find a successor from the two rookies, so as to go home and enjoy the blessings of his wife. From my point of view, the real hero of the film should be the rookie Mathias, his experience is a complete tracing of an idealist dream broken, and in the broken based on the realism of the newborn trajectory.

Nascimone in the film belongs to the tough cool man, belongs to the character who has seen everything through, he went deep into the slums to punish the thugs in the way of thugs. Think about this scene, a man was grabbed by two people, put on a plastic bag to make it suffocate, and then asked, “Where is XX?” Look closely, this is not a gangster looking for enemies again, but special police interrogating prisoners. The cruelty of this film is that it creates an atmosphere that makes you feel that this way seems “normal”, that is where everyone can suddenly pull out a gun and play with their lives, where there is no reasoning, so Nasssimon is trained to be an efficient violence machine, in a violent city, he is chilling with more violent methods In a violent city, he is able to deter criminals by doing so, and violence is shown in extremis here.

On the contrary, the two rookies, who, as the captain’s monologue says, have just graduated from the police academy with idealistic enthusiasm, while beginning the process of having their ideals eroded. Neto Hsien’s appears more in tune with Nas Simon, whose ideal is to become a real police officer who can go into battle and do real work, not a reserve soldier who repairs locomotives. And Mathias’s ideal is even more noteworthy, as a police officer who also found time to conceal his profession and go to college to study law, as a police officer in a violent city, he apparently had faith in the power of reason at first. However, he has a mental “split” when interacting with his classmates. On the one hand, he understands the harsh reality of being a police officer and the compulsion to commit violence, while on the other hand, at school, he learns about the power of reason. Faced with the accusations of police brutality by his wealthy classmates, he naturally defends the police. And the details that need to be noted is that Mathias is a black man, the slums to play for survival are mostly people of color, while the rich kids in the university are almost all white, which also implies the racial problems left by history, and the strong gap between the rich and poor under unequal opportunities, often an important reason for rampant crime to occur. Mathias, on the one hand, carries the rationality that Nascimone also appreciates; he introspectively recognizes the limits of violence, while not losing his sense of justice. Faced with a scene of judicial corruption in the police world that he witnessed (another cause of rampant crime), he also has doubts about what the law upholds and defends, and is somewhat shaken by the way it is upheld, until Neto’s death gives him the biggest push.

Before Neto’s death, Mathias wore glasses and appeared gentle in class, and he appeared somewhat resistant to violence, even if it was given by law. But when his best friend Neto is killed by a gangster, he is like a raging lion, madly avenging Neto’s death, more violent than ever against the man he sees as the culprit, and by this time he has broken with the rich law students who live in the “big house facing south”, beating up the one student he sees as responsible for Neto’s death. The violence that erupted when he beat up the one student he saw as responsible for Neto’s death was astonishing. It’s as if he’s taking a refresher course, and after his best friend’s death, he learns almost overnight what elite police training camps can only teach in a few months, coldly and without mercy, and a young man from the bottom who once believed in rational law is thus transformed into a representative of the new generation of special police officers, taking over the mantle of Nascent Simon, a job whose difficulty can be seen in Nascent Simon’s subsequent boredom, Mathias’ idealism shattered with the tragic death of his best friend, and under the reality of violence, a violent version of Mathias is being reborn, which seems to have become the line that has to be followed under the specific circumstances.

What do we do about the rampant crime? Very often, we know that this is only the surface, behind which there are a series of causes such as corruption, the gap between rich and poor, and social transformation, but these internal causes are often too ponderous and too hopeless to solve. So, instead of dealing with the causes of the crime phenomenon, the individual treatment of the crime cases seems more “simple” and easier to cheer people up, so we condemn the torture of confessions on the one hand, on the other hand, for the harsh violence against criminals shouted addiction. I believe that, despite all the difficulties and powerful forces, the fundamental way is to explore and solve the internal causes of rampant crime, and that simply fighting violence with violence can only create an endless cycle, and crime cannot be eliminated from the world. Mathias’ inquiry fails, and he plunges into a seemingly endless cycle of violence with anger, and the film ends with a somewhat pessimistic feeling. This question may have to wait for more idealistic recruits to come forward to answer it.