Elite Squad Review

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What I like about the movie is that it isn't overly preachy. I found this movie's fast edits and shaky cam actually appropriate for this gritty crime drama. That made the movie fun and entertaining, in a way a more serious film might not have been. For that I might rate the movie higher than I should, because I didn't quite feel preached to. My main beef with the movie was the narration, which personally I kind of wish I could have seen the movie without. Narration might have been necessary to keep some focus on its plot themes, and not get lost in action. The problem is that the narrator switches between his personal story and his God’s view of what’s happening with the main characters. It probably should have been one or the other, but telling ends up with too much narration. Remove either of these elements, and I think the added subtly would make the film feel more layered and complex. But with the narration and action, it became an assault of the senses which I can see why it turned off so many critics.

If the movie adds anything to the debate, it's that it tries to link the systematic societal failures that result in drug violence to upper class individual moral behavior. The movie asks, "How many poor kids have to die for a rich kid to smoke weed?" It's a message that gets buried under a lot of on screen violence, torture, and over narration. Even asking that very question ignores the role the state has in that violence, with the creation of a paramilitary police corp and corruption among the regular police. The movie points the finger at drug gangs, the state, and the affluent classes alike, and links individual actions to systemic issues. I can't knock the movie for that.

The movie doesn't tackle urban violence as a result of poverty, and treads likely on the subject of urban violence being a result of classism. In this movie, the race/class division almost seems acceptable if only non-black/non-poor kids didn't travel to the Favela to buy drugs. Then again, other films have documented classism elsewhere, and doing so here probably would have made this movie less of a shoot-em-up, and it would have been less appealing to me. A police drama has to be about the police, and by showing a liberal sympathizing university student resorting to torture to extract information from a witness, there's more to blame than just the cop, regardless of how disturbing the cop's actions are.