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Rating: "I am not a regular cop, I am with the BOPE: the best in the police, the elite squad. In theory, we belong to the police force, but in practice, BOPE is another kind of police. Our emblem shows what happens when we enter a favela, and our uniform is not like the police's: it's black. BOPE was created to intervene where conventional police are unable to, and in Rio, this happens every day. I don't know what pissed me off more, the drug dealers packed with weapons or the incompetence of the regular police. At the time, the police had 30,000 men, a more than sufficient number to shut down that drug traffic, but they were poorly trained and poorly paid: from such people, you can't expect them to care much. BOPE had only 100 men..."
Tropa de Elite is a film about the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, a special intervention group operating in the favelas and primarily dealing with targeting drug trafficking. Their logo features a skull pierced by the sword of Damocles and adorned with two crossed guns. Their agents undergo extremely tough training, which combined with constant practice on the "battlefield," has made them the best urban guerrilla troop in the world.
We are in 1997, and during Wojtyla's visit to Brazil, he chose to stay at a friend's bishop's house near a very dangerous favela. It was unlikely that drug dealers would care about shooting the pontiff, but to ensure the safety of John Paul II, the government decided to clean up the area, and since conventional police are ineffective in favelas, they used BOPE.
The film narrates the story of Captain Roberto Nascimento, who, heavily stressed and about to become a father, wants to leave BOPE to focus on his family. In doing so, he finds himself facing the difficult challenge of finding a capable replacement.
The commendations go first to the willingness to represent the Brazilian reality of drug dealing and corruption in a lucid and direct manner. There's no biased and fictionalized portrayal as often happens in this genre of films, but a raw and unfiltered view of a world where the system only protects itself, the police are corrupt to the core, teenagers are exploited by dealers, and the bourgeois buying drugs finance the trade. Taking a stance and "choosing a side" is very difficult for the viewer because the director clearly shows how good and bad, right and wrong, in modern social structures are empty and anachronistic concepts.
The direction is modern and effective however, some stylistic choices akin to "Reality TV" are questionable, like the shaky and confused shots used in the shootout at the beginning of the film. Aside from this, the pacing is excellent: the film follows the stories of the three protagonists (Nascimento and his potential replacements) who end up intertwining with each other.
A really fine debut for José Padilha, who constructs a serious and objective portrait of this unique Brazilian special force drawn from the book by Luiz Eduardo Soares. It shows us, on the one hand, their brutality, especially in extracting confessions, and on the other hand, the essential role they play in combating drug traffic given the impotence of the police forces. Added to this is the allure of elitism and the fact that BOPE, unlike everything else, is immune to the corruption that plagues the country. There are various reasons why they are pursued by Amnesty International, although those viewing these situations from the outside often don't realize what it means to fight in favelas against heavily armed gangs.
"As long as drug dealers have enough money to arm themselves, then ours will continue to be a war."
Well-deserved Golden Bear in Berlin.
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