‘City of God: The Fight Rages On’ Review: HBO/Max’s Brazilian Spoinoff

When Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s City of God came out in 2002, it was generally acclaimed — countless Top 10 lists, four Oscar nominations, etc. But it did not go without criticism. There were some who found the violent coming-of-age drama to be exploitative, fetishizing poverty and crime in the Brazilian favelas without digging deeper than misery.

In very meta terms, it’s a duality that haunts the lead of HBO Latino and Max‘s new spinoff series, City of God: The Fight Rages On. Wilson (Alexandre Rodrigues) grew up in the sprawling lower-income suburbs of Rio de Janeiro and, after watching many of his friends and rivals die in the film’s escalating violence, found his escape through his camera. Though he’s become one of the country’s most famous photojournalists, even he’s exhausted by how much of his success has come from capturing images of death.

Wilson’s estranged daughter Leka (Luellem de Castro), a rapper whose sex-forward lyrics and image mortify him, puts the dilemma more bluntly.

“Do you know what you’ve become, Rocket?” she demands, taunting him with an old nickname. “A butcher. And you sell black meat. The whiteys watch TV, sip on their chocolate milk, watching us suffer and thinking, ‘I’m so grateful for my life.’”

After chewing on this idea for a while, Wilson vows to do better by his community. Will he? Will City of God: The Fight Rages On?

Through the first two episodes sent to critics, it’s hard to tell. Thus far, City of God: The Fight Rages On is more in conversation with the fans and critics of a 22-year-old picture than anything related to life in a more current Brazil. Its opening chapters are occasionally thrilling, but mostly pandering and correcting, trapped in the past instead of pushing forward.

“Rocket,” as he’s still called in the favela, is the embodiment of The Fight Rages On‘s core frustration. Was Rocket the protagonist of the film? Absolutely. But was he anybody’s idea of its most memorable character? Probably not. Some of the concerns about the movie stemmed from how generally bland its heroes were, in contrast to its colorful hoodlums and doomed revolutionaries. Almost all of the most vivid characters from City of God were killed off as part of various emotional crescendos — or else they were played by international breakout star Alice Braga, who is not back for this spinoff.

That means the first couple of Fight Rages On installments have to do a lot of foundation-laying around Wilson, who has become more famous and more guilty, but not exactly more interesting. He’s an observer and, as such, requires more dynamic presences to observe. The show’s creative team (Meirelles is a producer, but not a writer or director) must either introduce a whole new cast or remind you of whatever marginal figures from the original drama are back — or, as is the more cumbersome case here, both.

Remember Barbantinho? You probably don’t. He is/was played by Edson Oliveira, he remains Wilson’s friend and a popular resident of the City of God, and he is now setting himself up for a political run. Remember Berenice (Roberta Rodrigues)? Kinda? She was Shaggy’s girlfriend who got out of the favela after he was killed, but now she’s back and running a samba school. Remember Cinthia (Sabrina Rosa)? She was Knockout Ned’s girlfriend and awful things happened to her, and now she leads the neighborhood association. Remember that long-haired kid who was the leader of the Runts? Apparently he was named Bradock (Thiago Martins) and he has grown into a dangerous criminal who’s currently behind bars.

Though digressive storytelling — the Scorsese-styled introductions, the teases of storylines that will become important later, the abruptly injected flashbacks — is completely a part of the brand, it’s a long time to spend looking backward rather than looking forward. The clips from the movie, of characters both returning and still absent, aren’t really integral anyway. They’re references and self-perpetuating nostalgia. (If there are connections to the previous City of God spinoff series, City of Men, they go unacknowledged.)

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The various new characters, whom we meet gradually and with less fanfare, are instantly richer than the shoehorned returning characters. The best of the group is Andréia Horta as Jerusa, who helps secure Bradock’s release and serves as a sexed-up Lady Macbeth, urging him to revolt against his father figure, favela kingpin Curió (Marcos Palmeira). There’s also PQD (Demétrio Nascimento Alves), a career soldier trying to remain neutral between the two burgeoning criminal factions; Lígia (Eli Pereira), a crusading journalist; and many more.

I could tell you that the plot of City of God: The Fight Rages On is basically, “A respected photojournalist finds his loyalties tested when a turf war explodes in the Rio slum he used to call home” and it wouldn’t be inaccurate. But it also wouldn’t capture the level of exposition necessary to get to that simple, if generally entertaining, core conflict.

By maybe halfway through the second chapters, The Fight Rages On becomes a series of high-stakes action sequences in favela locations, and it’s clear that the series wants to have it both ways. It wants to acknowledge Wilson’s guilt and offer a critique of the complicity between Brazilian law enforcement, politicians and oligarchs at the expense of ordinary people. But it equally wants to be about various impoverished people lurking in dark alleys with machine guns, disposable pawns in an ongoing drug war.

While the locations and circuitous narrative remain integral to the series, The Fight Rages On rarely emulates or finds a replacement for the distinctive aesthetic of the film. It wasn’t like the movie was wholly unique — to be pretentious, it’s The 400 Blows meets The Battle of Algiers meets Pixote, and it’s of a piece with the gritty flair of various Mexican and South American directors — but it was marvelously visceral. Every outfit had a texture. Every marketplace had an aroma. The cacophony of the sound design and an aura of radiating heat permeated every frame.

Here, the constant flashbacks force the disappointing reminder that the new series is flat and glossy and divorced from any documentary-style grounding. It looks like a television show, or possibly several television shows.

It’s caught in a web of derivation. Meirelles and directing compatriot José Padilha broke out at the same time, with City of God and Bus 174 coming out in the same year. Padilha had a massive hit with 2007’s Elite Squad and its sequel, before producing and directing the start of Netflix’s Narcos. Now you have a City of God sequel that focuses, at least partially, on the same BOPE police unit featured in Elite Squad, and if there’s anything that City of God: The Fight Rages On feels like, it’s Narcos: Brazil. Since Narcos was already plenty derivative, we’re into copies of copies of copies here.

I’ll still stick it out for a few more episodes. I want to see if Wilson’s regret is meaningful to the story or just for show. I’m hooked on several of the performances, especially those from Horta, Martins and de Castro. And there isn’t anything inherently wrong with the idea of a Narcos: Brazil. If only City of God: The Fight Rages On didn’t keep reminding you that its origins were far more potent.