It’s all about the belated sequel these days. Tim Burton’s exhumed Beetlejuice for another supernatural knees-up after 36 years in development hell, while Twisters whipped up a storm at the box office almost three decades since the original struck fear into every cow in Oklahoma.
Now City of God, Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s 2002 crime epic set in the Rio De Janeiro slum – or favela – Cidade de Deus, gets the HBO treatment with a six-part TV series that honours the vibrancy of the movie, even if it can’t possibly compete on a broader scale. The film was narrated by Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a gifted young photographer caught in the crossfire of a community so scarred by violence, drugs and corruption that actual children had become pint-sized gangsters who’d stick a pistol in your face at the mere mention of bedtime.
The action unfolded between the late ‘60s and early ‘80s, as a gang named the Runts took hold of a drug district known as “the apartment”, which led to a bloody turf war. Reflecting the real-life passage of time since the release of Meirelles’ masterpiece, City of God: The Fight Rages On lands us back in Cidade de Deus two decades later.
Rodrigues (who made headlines in 2018 when it emerged that he’d been working as an Uber driver) reprises his role as Rocket, now a celebrated photojournalist who’d rather be known by his real name, Wilson. He’s made it out of the favela, but is drawn back by his work because, it turns out, violent images sell papers. “I left the slum,” he tells us grimly in voiceover, “but the slum didn’t leave me.”
By 2004, we learn, the horrors have only escalated in Cidade de Deus. Pistols and knives have given way to rifles and machine guns, while an early scene in the first episode depicts charred bodies being dredged from a ditch. Even so, semi-successful attempts have been made to rehabilitate the slum and emphasise its positive side, which sees kids play football in pockets of peaceful streets.
Inevitably, this uneasy equilibrium is shattered when former Runts gang member Bradock (Thiago Martins) is released from prison to challenge local kingpin Curió (Marcos Palmeira) for the divisive “apartment” district. This well-worn plot device signifies the show’s inability to recreate the iconoclasm of the movie (and Paulo Lins’ source novel), as director Aly Muritiba adopts a glossier visual style and has to work without the shock factor of kids with guns. What’s left is a slightly softer, sometimes soapy drama that stills packs an occasional punch.
It’s refreshing to see a more nuanced take on life in the Cidade de Deus, the new cast achieves greater gender parity than the film and there’s a well-drawn new character in Rocket’s daughter Leka (Luellem de Castro). A talented rapper, she commands a standout scene in which she blasts her distant dad for monetising the slum’s violence: “You sell Black meat,” she spits.
Clearly, nostalgia is a strong factor in these belated reboots, but this TV spin-off, which jostles with new ideas and compelling themes, is well worth the return to Rio. The original movie was impossible to forget and it’s a thrill to experience the sensory overload all over again. You can leave City Of God, but this immersive world never quite leaves you.
‘City of God: The Fight Rages On’ is available to stream August 25 via HBO Max