Review of City of God: The Fight Rages On – Sequel for the small screen loses power | Drama

Bhen City Of God: The Fight Rages On begins, Buscapé, the weary photographer who calls himself Rocket and is once again played with a comic sense of intimidation by Alexandre Rodrigues, is stuck in the same place, caught in the crossfire between rival gangs and the police, just as we left him over two decades ago; still camera in hand, narrating how the cosmos keeps throwing him into sticky situations. This time, he prattles on about how nothing has changed in his titular Rio de Janeiro favela, as bullets whiz by, bodies pile up, and he continues to snap photos of the dead.

None of this should be surprising. The whole point of City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund's Oscar-nominated 2002 crime drama, was that the factual violence it took to the extreme was cyclical and inescapable. It's a lesson that a long-running series like Narcos has taken to heart – and exploited – to feed the appetite for goodfellas-in-the-favela content that City of God stoked.

If a reboot like The Fight Rages On makes sense—and that's a big IF—it might be as a self-critical corrective to a film that was incredibly entertaining and full of authenticity, but also veered into the voyeuristic. What made City of God strike like a white-hot bolt of lightning was its combination of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie's pulp with a neorealist social drama about impoverished children in the slums of Rio de Janeiro ravaging each other. But it also left a bad taste in some critics' mouths, with so many characters seeming thin and expendable, like the corpses strewn across the newspaper Rocket works for.

The new six-part series – produced by Meirelles and directed by Aly Muritiba – brings back much of the original cast (those who play the surviving characters) but covers the same ground with significantly less flair. In the first few episodes provided to critics, Rocket is older and much less agitated (of course, he's outgrown the pubescent vibes of the original). He comes to terms with his role as a photographer – not to mention guiding the audience and representing the filmmakers – especially after he's confronted with his photos being devoured by those untouched by violence.

His belligerent 15-year-old daughter tells him he's exploiting trauma. Her words hurt, even more so because they prove to be accurate. A cover photo taken by Rocket of an innocent schoolchild being gunned down is weaponized by a corrupt politician who wants to give the militarized police more autonomy to storm the favelas.

In a post-BLM City of God, these cops must contend not only with criminals (many of whom are from their own ranks) but also with activists, who Rocket and the entire series deliberately focus on. Among them is Barbantinho (Edson Oliveira), Rocket's childhood best friend who is now a community organizer with dreams of running a local office. Cinthia (Sabrina Rosa), the girlfriend of Knockout Ned, the original's civilian turned fallen gang leader, channels her trauma into something positive, overseeing the local community center and running child empowerment programs. Berenice (Roberta Rodrigues), who in the original saw her lover Shaggy gunned down by police, plays a stern matriarchal figure in the community, likely to take a hard line on any neighborhood dwarf who gets involved with the local gangsters.

In the first episode, these characters, as well as a whole host of local crime bosses, politicians and journalists, are introduced in a rushed and tedious and sometimes incoherent manner.

The genius of City of God, the reason it was rightly celebrated for its script and editing, lay in the way it chopped up two decades into two breakneck and mad hours that played with timelines. The film took steps back and jumped through the years in a samba-inflected rhythm. At every turn it breathlessly introduced new characters, let familiar ones die and brought back some we no longer knew. And in doing so, it never loses its hold on the audience.

The film had a structural elegance that was completely lost in the series, which – with even more scope for action than its predecessor – somehow complicates a relatively simple setup. A war breaks out between the paternalistic crime boss (Marcos Palmeira) and his temperamental lieutenant (Thiago Martins), who is egged on by a passionate and trigger-happy girlfriend (Andréia Horta).

Familiar stuff, especially in a post-Narcos TV landscape, but this time it's told in tropes, meaning the raw authenticity of the source material gets lost in translation. Whatever critical discussion the new series wants to have about the exploitation and sensationalism of trauma, it rings hollow once the shooters pull their guns and the MTV aesthetic kicks in.